Awake at 5:00 AM with dandelions on the brain.

We are fast approaching the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice when the sun shines least on our hemisphere. So we at the Crazy thought it might be a good time to remind you of the dandelion, that nemesis of meticulous lawn lovers everywhere. They sneak onto even the best manicured lawns. Every golf course has at least a few. They grow between the cracks of the sidewalk (we once viewed one on the roof of a house, growing in a corner where rain and time had built a small mud spot for it to take root.) Dandelions are not native to North America, they were brought on the Mayflower in 1620 as a medicinal root, by 1671 Native Americans were making coffee out of the roots on the great plains. The greens of a dandelion have vitamins A, B Complex, C and D, as well as the minerals Iron, Potassium and Zinc. They have in recent studies been shown to help improve liver function and be useful as a diuretic with the added benefit that they have potassium which most diuretics leach out of our systems. They have been around at least 250 million years. (Probably longer, but the earliest fossils found so far are from that era.) Who as a child (or a childlike adult) has not taken the seed stalk and puffed on it to watch the seeds float away in the wind. (Ahh yes, we remember as a child, quietly blowing dandelion seeds across the plains as dinosaurs thundered by.) But still, there are a few things you might not know about the Dandelion (unless of course you have botanist leanings or know any closet botanists.) Every part of the dandelion is edible and useful, some cultures made a brown dye from it's roots. The Chinese people have been using it to treat breast cancer for almost a thousand years. Dandelions are high in antioxidants.
Tasty in salads, (if picked while the leaves are still young.) Good for the liver. And can brighten up an otherwise barren place in a yard where nothing else will grow. (Like our lawn.) So come spring we know we will be happy to see the cheerful dandelion. As will our iguana Saura (She loves the flowers too.) But we think the most interesting thing about the dandelion is what it does for the bees, and why. The dandelion is asexual, it requires no honeybees to pollinate it. It has been a self pollinating plant for millions of years, nature could have easily dispensed with the bright flower head by now. (It reflects yellow light which is a spectrum bees find irresistible.) So why does the dandelion grow a bright yellow head and plenty of nectar. For the bees of course. The Noble Dandelion.