THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996 TAG: 9604270001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Another spring and it's wartime again in our - and others' - yards.
The hostilities are provoked year after year by that infernal invader of lawns and gardens, the dandelion.
When I gird up with sprays, digging tools (a large screwdriver is my weapon of choice), or whatever, my mind usually focuses on (and is inflamed by) the offensive little blots of yellow and the even more insidious puffballs that toss seeds to the four winds.
One of the most maddening of dandelion performances is its ability to appear in the few days between mowing and tending, as if from nowhere, not only with a couple of full-fledged blossoms, but with one or two stalks sporting those little gray globes, ready to explode at the slightest touch. Such reproductive speed is simply incredible.
That kind of thing, however, hasn't been uppermost in my yard ruminations this year. Instead, I have found myself thinking most often about something else - a paradox that I have reflected upon only fleetingly in the past.
I'm talking about the difference in my attitude toward dandelions and buttercups.
Both Taraxacum officinale and Ranunculus something-or-other (I couldn't find the exact species designation for our local buttercup in a quick check of my references) have sprouted in copious spatterings of bright buttons in lawns I have tried to keep in order over the years. Yet I never get in any great fever to find and eliminate buttercups, accepting them as pleasant little decorations of gold, while reacting to the dandelions as impertinent little stains of yellow, even though - to be thoroughly honest - they're quite similar in hue, each as golden as can be.
And I have to admit to other close approximations in botanical character, including some attributes of the dandelion that under certain conditions make it a more people-friendly plant than the buttercup.
Both are works of art, nature-wise, in color and intricate design.
Both grow to exhibit similar height and spread.
For the playful young, both can be converted into happy decorations - flowery chains made by inserting successive stems into fingernail-made slits in the stem just adjacent.
Granted, buttercups make a gentler imprint on us when we first encounter the two - butter, for one thing being less threatening than the fiercely toothed jungle cat after which the dent-de-lion got its name.
But on the dandelion's side are such useful practicalities, as noted in an earlier piece, as its contribution to salads, extractable chemicals which have medicinal qualities, a latex which can be made into fuel and its sometime transformation into dandelion wine.
So why do I (and perhaps some others of like bias) continue rooting up dandelions so furiously while engaging in studied nonpursuit of buttercups - in effect, rooting FOR them?
I could say: Beats me. But a suspicion intrudes. Perhaps I've got this notion locked in my head somewhere: That dandelions are weeds and buttercups are wildflowers. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk. by CNB