24
I am going to love you and treat you kind. Maybe squish you in an embrace.
You can ask me for my discord if we're mutuals.
Thinking this morning about how a field of dandelions is actually quite pretty, and how they are/were a vital source of food for bees and humans, and how they might be the most reviled plant in America because they have the gall to be strong enough to ruin a patch of over-manicured invasive grass
to quote myself from a particularly metal day on twitter:
the dandelions are also invasive so it's just a big shrug for me. I do enjoy how mad they make the lawn perverts tho.
I heard the same thing as a kid, but only ever from my parents, so I decided to do a little digging.
This pamphlet from the Ontario Invasive Plant Council (a Canadian organization) states "Some [plants], like the common dandelion, may be a nuisance, but do not pose a significant threat to native plants and their ecosystems."
Meanwhile, this article from the North American Invasive Species Network (a USA Organization), which does classify dandelions as invasive, specifically states they're a danger to "athletic fields and golf courses" and "ornamental plantings" (i.e. decorative flowers that may not be native in the first place).
This is just from a 15-minute online search (and filtering out listicles with no citations), so I don't know what the general consensus is in the botanical community. But I suspect the folks who say dandelions are invasive have more lawn-centric priorities than those who don't.
Generally, Taraxacum officinale is just considered "non-native" to the Americas. Invasive species need to cause active harm, economic or environmental. It can be a problem in crops, causing economic harm, but I don't believe there are any studies suggesting they cause environmental harm? Certainly not as much harm as lawn turf monocultures, at least.
I would add, there are native plants that look very similar to Taraxacum officinale to an untrained eye, like a seeding Agoseris grandiflora. So certainly don't just uproot everything that has a seed puff ball.
Taraxacum officinale is eurasian and was brought to the americas by european settlers. There's definitely no getting rid of them at this point and they're more useful than imported turf grass, but they can be a nuisance in native gardens bc they love to form big mats and crowd everything out if allowed.
see the term invasive inherently means "harmful" in a botanical sense. there are "non-native" plants, there are "naturalized" plants, and then there are "invasive." obviously a non-native plant is any plant not native to an area, whereas naturalized plants are plants that fit into the existing ecosystem - an example of such from a 30 seconds google search is plantago major, which specifically fits into existing ecosystems and performs help alongside other components with soil regeneration.
at this time, the dandelion isn't considered invasive in the americas by and large.
i know someone who i think will appreciate this way of looking at them quite a bit, thanks!
Look up five ways to cook dandelions and it becomes a game changer.
