Reading Our Region

Essays from a Regional Writer

Susan Charkes enjoys hearing and telling stories, especially those involving the environment, farming, and sustainability in our region. Discover her poetic view of the outdoors and be inspired to visit the places she describes. Learn more about Susan, her writing, and even hear her podcasts at www.susancharkes.com.

Sample these selected writings:

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Golden Locks and Red Sox

by Susan Charkes

…in which it is revealed why a Dandelion is like Carl Yastrzemski…

Now, Dear Reader, you may well scoff at the premise and note, with a bored sigh, that both the dandelion and the baseball seasons encompass not only the summer but also large portions of spring and fall. And the wave of your hand indicates that you have observed that both of my Subjects light up a greensward, much to the delight (or consternation) of the lord and lady of the manor (depending on their inclination). With a shrug, you note that each remains in one place for an entire career, the dandelion being reliant on a taproot; the player, on the force of loyalty. All true enough, but mere spokes in the wheel, not the nub of the relation.

Exposing the obscure bond between the field-filler and the outfielder begins with a question that has a seemingly simple answer. Why are dandelions yellow? To anyone who has observed bees surveying a field, tracing S-paths and loop-de-loops, spotting a blossom and running straight for the target, the answer is obvious: dandelions are yellow because bees like yellow. More than yellow, they like the nectar of which the yellow is a reliable indicator. And further, though we are insensitive to these matters, dandelion yellow is not just yellow, it has a high reflectance coefficient for Ultraviolet light: when the sun is shining, a flowerhead in a sea of green (lawn or meadow) is the equivalent of torchlight at midnight to a flying insect. Drawn to the beacon, bees, flies, butterflies ants, beetles, and thrips plunge into its source to gather nectar. But it is all a sweet swindle: nectar is the bait, the pollinator the dupe, and the real story, the one you must know by heart, Dear Reader, is the transfer of pollen – which, attached ever-so-lightly to the stamen, detaches when brushed by a passing insect, thence carried by the unwitting bearer to another flower’s stigma, fertilizing the flower.

But (you would be right to inquire) which flower? The dandelion pate supports a headdress of yellow plumes, each a flower in its own right – a floret. Between a hundred and two hundred florets huddle together in a flowerhead. Each floret is a graceful pinnate adornment. From an elliptical immature seed a single yellow five-lined petal arcs back, a tube that gradually opens up and flattens out toward the top. Around its base wave white filaments, like soft down. The yellow stigma emerges from the tubular portion of the petal and stands straight up, a “y” with two arms curling back inwards toward the stalk, like an elaborately-worked hairpin. Pollen grains, in matching yellow, bedeck the stalk. Any insect combing through the coiffure may transfer some pollen from one floret to another, either within the same flowerhead or between distinct flowerheads.

Would that it were so simple. The dandelion, not content with the standard story, need not depend on the wanderings of organisms that inhabit a separate branch of the tree of life. No, the dandelion could dispense with the come-hither yellow and the expensive libations provided to flying guests. It may self-pollinate, the pollen of a floret fertilizing its own seed. But even unfertilized, a dandelion floret can reproduce all by itself; this method of reproduction (called apomixis) is the equivalent of self-cloning in that the progeny are genetically identical to the parent. So the dandelion can take advantage of the benefits of sexual reproduction (adding genetic variability to the dandelion population) and of asexual reproduction (continuity of the successful individual).

Thus the dandelion game exalts both the individual and the team; tradition and novelty. Not dissimilar from baseball, you note? True, true – but no, reader, it is not yet time to head for the aisles; the Yaz connection remains unrevealed.

After blooming, the flowerhead closes for several days, then opens, transformed into a white globe , a ball of filaments: the seedhead. Each thread has a parachute-like canopy at the outer end and an achene (a one-seed-bearing fruit) at the inner end. Wind, heat or a puff of breath breaks the filaments free and the seeds are off. They scatter across the ground, not at all unlike the way a baseball player scatters hits around a field.

But the dandelion has another trick. Lest any plant find itself without pollinators for its flowers, or even without any flowers at all – victim of a mower, a weeder, or a grazer – all is not lost. Not content with pollination (self- or insect-enabled) and apomixis to reproduce, the dandelion also exploits vegetative propagation. The root, or even pieces thereof, will grow into a new plant.

Not one, not two, but three strategies. So the golden tiara that the dandelion wears ought, by rights, to be a triple crown. Not unlike that worn by the last pro baseball player to top the league in batting average, runs batted in, and home runs, the reigning royal standard-bearer, Mr. Yazstremski.

Truly a Hall-of-Famer.