Figure 1 A dandelion diadem. (c) DE Wolf 2021.
“I’m afraid there’s no denying
I’m just an awful dandy-lion
A fate I don’t deserve”
I was in a conversation the other day about the dandelion. I should say lowly dandelion. But that was just the point of discussion, why do we consider the dandelion lowly?
“Hath not a dandelion glorious color? Hath not a dandelion leaves, stems, petals? Is it not quenched with the same summer’s rain? Do not its seeds float on the same glorious summer winds as the flower?”
Well you will perhaps get both my allusion and my point. I have recently read a defense of the dandelion. I am most convinced by the arguments in favor of eating dandelions. Drying the roots and adding it like chicory to coffee. Sprinkling dried leaves on your favorite pizza. Tossing young leaves and flowers in your salad and, of course, there is always the matter of dandelion tea.
The English name dandelion is a corruption of the French dent de lion meaning “lion’s tooth.” So wherefore does its bite come from? I want to advocate that we revert and view the things of this world as a young child. Do you remember cresting a hill and coming upon a glorious field of golden dandelions? Do you remember the wonder of metamorphosis from sunlike orb to delicate diaphanous crown of seeds? Do you remember seeing how many puffs it would take to blow them off the stem, and the magic of wondering where the wind would carry them? I submit that the world would be a lot better off if we spent more time dreaming once more like children!
I suspect that the contempt to which dandelions are held evolves from our inability to control them, to confine them to this patch of garden and not yonder. Other flowers are subservient; the dandelion is a rebel demanding freedom.
So all of that is an argument meant to introduce the image of Figure 1, “a dandelion diadem.” Besides being a tribute to the abilities of the iPhone camera system, this image seems to reflect a million worlds of the universe. Perhaps it shows that we are part of “The Matrix.” It certainly evokes the world of networks, of neurons, and artificial intelligence. It seems to be a fractal world of chaos. But while I have not taken this image to emphasize the point, the dandelion’s flower and its crown follow the same mysterious order of the Fibonacci sequence, which we have previously discussed. So really universe of all things lies within the (humble?) dandelion, and its seeds floating on gentle breezes represent explorers and colonizers of new worlds.