On dandelions. Their splendor in the grass.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. I had been up all night working on an article on global warming. The subject, serious, is draining, demanding, necessarily thought provoking, disturbing. As the sun began to rise, showing its intentions by the first light of a brand-new day, I wrote the last word… and went immediately into the Cambridge Common for air, for light, to be freed from the sobering realities of my midnight researches.
At this early hour, where the vestiges of night still prevailed, as if unwilling to leave, there was no one present… and this distressed me, for I was in need of a smile, a word or two of greeting, and (were I fortunate) a friend. For my night’s work had been long and distressful, spent considering the vulnerabilities of Earth and the growing likelihood that our species, having had our way with this planet, was unwilling, perhaps unable, to do what is necessary to save our only, our collective home. Yes, I needed a friend… and solace.
Then there it was… a sight I had seen for every one of my 65 years…  and which was there for me now in the full vibrancy of its joyous yellow. The dandelion. And as if it knew my need, it took me back at once to the springtime of my life when my thoughts were not cosmic or burdensome… but soaring, unfettered, generous, happy. All this one single dandelion, radiant in the mud, delivered to me,  glad to be of service. And I smiled, gloom lightened by the dandelion’s undoubted splendor in the grass, gracious gift to me so many times before; gracious gift to me again now bidding me face the world and its daunting troubles with more cheer… and even hope…
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, more sensitive than they might like to show, knew the friendship and power of the dandelion. In 1967 their Rolling Stones sang this:
“Dandelion don’t tell no lies Dandelion will make you wise Tell me if she laughs or cries Blow away dandelion.”
You’ll find this song in any search engine. Go now and listen carefully, to both the version by the Rolling Stones and the unexpected beauty of the one played by the London Symphony Orchestra. And understand this: a plant that can inspire such sentiments can surely be no weed but must be instead a thing of joy and beneficence.
Facts about the dandelion.
Taraxacum is a large genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. They are native to Eurasia and North Africa, and two species, T. officinale and T. erythrospermum are found as weeds worldwide.
The common name dandelion comes from the French, dent-de-lion, meaning lion’s tooth. Like other members of the Asteraceae family, they have very small flowers collected together into a composite flower head. Each single flower is called a floret. Many Taraxacum species produce seeds asexually by apomixis, where the seeds are produced without pollination, resulting in offspring that are genetically identical to the parent plant.
These are the facts and as such are important… but no where near as important as what follows, for the dandelion, remembering me from a lifetime of visits with its ancestors, was candid about its situation and how little the people passing by know of it… and its myriad services to our kind. I listened in the pristine dawn to what he told me… for he needed to tell and I needed to hear…
Poets and dandelions.
Most of the many poets who have written about dandelions are women…. and whilst they undoubtedly mean well… they have grossly misunderstand the dandelion. And here he offered one cogent example after another, starting with these words from Helen Barron Bostwick’s no doubt unintentionally condescending poem “Little dandelion”, irritating the dandelion right from its title and irritating it throughout with its ill-considered aggravating descriptions: “Bright little Dandelion… Wise little Dandelion… True little dandelion” and many similar misunderstandings and provocations.
Dandelions, he told me, are resolute, bold, tenacious, determined pathfinders. How else had they covered the known world in an imperium greater than all the captains general of human history combined?
But there was more, much more to come as the eloquent dandelion warmed to his subject…
In her poem “To a Dandelion” Helen  Gray  Cone wrote of the “Humble Dandelion” while an equally uncomprehending Hilda Conkling said “Little soldier with the golden helmet.” As he rattled off the evidence so long accumulated and earnestly considered, his dew touched leaves quivered, for this dandelion spoke for all his aggrieved species. But here I, who had needed comfort just a moment ago, was able to give it, the truest measure of empathy and satisfaction.
I did not merely regard but fully perceived this agitated friend. So I whispered these words, to be carried and delivered by the lightest of breezes… “There is more knowledge of you than you may know, more reasons to be of the good cheer you have shared with me than you may have ever known or considered.” And  here I recited the always insightful and soothing words of a man who had, like me, truly perceived more in the dandelion than their littleness… This man was the Great Republic’s great poet Walt Whitman. These were his simple, evocative words from his masterpiece “Leaves of Grass”  (1855):
“Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging/ As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been/ Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass — innocent, golden, calm as the dawn/ the spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.”
“I remember… yes, I remember.” And  tears of remembrance mixed with the dew.. for these generous sentiments, celestial, obliterated an ocean of misstatements and misunderstandings, a single word of generosity and genius providing an infinity of bliss.
And so we understood each other, this bright yellow dandelion accoutered in radiance and I. We had both found a friend and been refreshed, each giving the other what he most needed then, all that was necessary to trek our laborious path. Thus we parted, happy with our chance encounter, our lives enhanced, our burden bearable again:
“Little girls and boys come out to play/ Bring your dandelions to blow away/ Dandelion don’t tell no lies/ Dandelion will make you wise.” And no one knows it better than I…
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Berries are nice’. The lush ripeness of strawberries and their sweet red allure.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. This is a story about a fruit so rich that once you start thinking about it you cannot rest until you are eating some… popping them into your mouth as fast as you can, crushing them… letting the richness of its sweet, sweet juice drip down your chin… glad to have all you can eat… joyfully careless about what you waste… for there will always be strawberries enough for you… you are absolutely sure of that!
But as Deana Carter knows, the lush abundance of strawberries is not unlimited… and so she twangs her tale of high summer, desire, a taste so sweet it maddens you and never satiates… producing a wine you can never get enough of… a strawberry wine… a wine that you can never forget… though sometimes you wish you’d never come to know.
And so, I have selected for today’s occasional music “Strawberry Wine” by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison, released in August, 1996. Nashville record companies found the song overly long, controversial, and not memorable enough. But when Carter sang her heart out about the summer, the boy… the strawberries and their wine… the record won Song of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards. Go now to any search engine and listen to it. You’ll find yourself remembering… you’ll find yourself craving… you’ll want their taste again… the berries always see to that…. for they are an imperious fruit.
Her Majesty’s strawberry. On a picture perfect summer day one August I was in Scotland, in the Highlands, at Balmoral… a country castle conceived by Prince Albert, the beautiful German prince loved obsessively by Queen Victoria. For an American used to the White House with its layer after layer of security, Balmoral comes as a rather unnerving shock. “Security” consisted of a single guard, unobtrusive, reading a newspaper. There might be, there must be more… but that’s all I ever saw. He barely looked at us.. smiled… and waved. Thus does Her Britannic Majesty tell you she is beloved of the people and doesn’t need a legion of centurions to protect her… unlike the president of the Great Republic who always needs more… and more.
And so in due course, my friend and I found ourselves in the magnificent park, expansive, serene, as lovely a place as Earth provides. And in the park I found a kitchen garden… the Queen’s garden… and in this garden I saw a strawberry, huge, perfectly ripe, ready to be eaten. And so I reached down to pluck it and enjoy… whereupon I felt a strong hand pulling me up and heard my friend’s voice, no longer amiable, but commanding, imperative, stentorian: “Do not touch that strawberry…. that is the Queen’s berry!” And I realized what being a subject of the Windsors meant, whilst I was the child of revolution and lese majeste/. And so the uneaten berry remained… for the delectation of the Queen.
Even dukes get only leaves.
I was crushed but as my friend was driving I had to give way, and gracefully, too — or else.
Then I had a thought that cheered me up. Even the grandest members of the nobility couldn’t eat of the Royal fruit with impunity. They had to make do with the strawberries’ leaves. And no, I am not making this up. A duke’s coronet proves my point. When a man becomes a duke (and there are only 24 such people in the entire realm of Great Britain) he is entitled to a silver-gilt circlet called a coronet. It features eight strawberry leaves — not one more and never a single one less. Thus does the sovereign elevate ambitious members of the aristocracy… and keep her strawberries for herself.
Other gentlemen of high rank and title are also entitled to strawberry leaves on their coronets. And here there is a most curious conundrum: marquesses who rank just below dukes in the peerage of the realm are entitled to four strawberry leaves… but earls, who rank below marquesses, get eight. What can this mean? For peers, as you may imagine, are protocol mad… and scrutinize their inferiors for any indication that they are claiming rank and privilege to which they are not strictly entitled. You can be sure there’s some fiddle going on here… but if the marquesses are in a pet of high indignation, they have but to look far down at the viscounts and barons who have not a single strawberry leaf between them… and that’s just the way these marquesses mean to keep it — “Honi soit qui mal y pense.”. Strawberry leaves mean strawberry tea.
Fortunately, there is more you can do with your strawberry leaves than wait for the Queen to make you a duke. That, after all, could be a long time coming since the last non-royal duke was his grace of Westminster, in 1874. It’s true that her present majesty when a young woman offered to make Sir Winston Churchill duke of London… but he declined and there the matter rests, perhaps forever.
And you’ll agree, this situation could be more than irritating for those who every morning see in their looking glasses, not milord this or the right honorable that but… His Grace the Duke of… resplendent in ermine and strawberry leaves.
These men, well bred for hundreds of years, offer the correct aquiline features, the correct pedigree, with generations of the right fathers and acquiescing mothers, masters of every arcane procedure, the right words and impeccable cravat, these men I tell you are smoldering with rage, aggravation, frustration, worthies all marooned in the wrong time. For them, each of them only the calming propensities of strawberry leaf tea will do… poured in a fragile cup of Minton, delivered by Nannie who always knows just what to do. “Have some more sugar, ducks. There, there, it’ll be all right.”
And so does Nanny, who loves you best, goes out with wicker basket on her arm, to the places she knows well, where the fresh wild strawberries grow or the sweet woodland berries. Take 1 tablespoon of dried rose petals, 1/2 teaspoon of yarrow, 1 teaspoon of strawberry leaves, a pinch of mint or blackberry leaves. Add 1 cup of boiling water and allow to steep. Choler cannot long exist in the presence of such determined coziness.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).
It was perhaps in pursuit of these ingredients that Emily Dickinson, mistress of opaque language, stepped out, “Over the fence” …
“Over the fence — Strawberries — grow — Over the fence — I could climb — if I tried, I know — Berries are nice. But — if I strained my Apron — God, would certainly scold! Oh, dear, — I guess if He were a Boy — he’d — climb — if He could!”
So, let’s leave it like that, for as Deana Carter sang, “It’s funny how those memories they last. Like strawberry wine… (when) The hot July moon saw everything” and the strawberries were there, bright and beckoning, just over the fence.