Promoted
Common Dandelion, Heesch, Netherlands
Our backyard lawn is currently full of dandelions. Early in the season, it's good practice to let them be for a while as they are a reliable source of nectar for many species of bee at a time when few other flowers are blooming.
This is a 70 image stack at 2.5 x macro. It turned out more interesting than I expected. The individual seeds with plume attached are too big for extreme macro, so instead I plucked a few to make a small opening to the core of the flower, where you can see how the seeds attach. They have an interesting hooked appearance, supposedly to make them attach to wherever they land after wind transported them. The same is true for the plumes, they too have a hooked appearance:
"Taraxacum officinale", the common dandelion, is a flowering herbaceous perennial plant of the family Asteraceae. It can be found growing in temperate regions of the world, in lawns, on roadsides, on disturbed banks and shores of water ways, and other areas with moist soils.
comments (10)
Did you know that a couple hundred years ago (in North America), people used to pull grass out of their lawns to make space for dandelions and other useful plants/weeds?
I'm not sure if you have enough magnification power for this, but it would be awesome to get shots of the pollen on the curly stigmas:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjun10/bj-dandelion.html
Also, a fun fact...Dandelion is called 'pissenlit', which means 'wet the bed' because dandelion is a diuretic. Posted 5 years ago
What is a diuretic? Something that makes you pee? Posted 5 years ago