Dandelions are not beautiful. Or that’s what someone decided a while back.
America spends tens of millions of dollars eradicating this lovely flower from their blandly uniform green lawns.
I’m an American. My family doesn’t spend very much getting them out of our lawn, but we do prefer uniform green blandness. (I have been known to pick the little flowers and throw them in the street – not a very effective method for preventing them from returning.)
Apparently, it’s not just an American obsession. They are also considered weeds in England, Australia and Denmark – to name just a few other cultures that categorize them as a nuisance.
Even the post-flower seed blooms are amazing – uniform spheres of light fluffy helicopters, each waiting to be carried by the wind onto a neighbor’s yard. Ikea took inspiration from this stage of the plant to create their Maskros lamp.
The dandelion’s medicinal qualities are so many that one must venture to at least the third page of Google results until it’s possible to find any reference to them being weeds. (The French word is pissenlit.)
But who decided that dandelions are ugly? Maybe it’s the spiky green leaves – when the English word is translated from sort-of French, the word literally means “teeth of lions.”
Or maybe the flowers blooming so fast and growing taller than the grass around them offends people who appreciate consistency and visual homogeneity.
I vote for a law requiring that dandelions will forever be considered beautiful.
