Meeting aggression with aggression, I have gone out every day to tear up the dandelions that want to conquer my back yard. We all know that dandelions must be removed root and all if they are to be defeated, but usually the roots stick stubbornly in the ground. Nevertheless, if I pluck off the leaves and flowers every day, I think the root must eventually die. But my dandelions are learning.
Normally, dandelion flowers stand up straight and tall, sharing their cheerful yellowness with all the world. Later, their sunniness turns to snow, and the snow scatters, and all that is left behind is an empty stalk, barren as a smokestack.
It takes a hard heart to cut them down in their cheer, but experience teaches that the dandelion is a coquette, and loves you only for your yard. Do not let her in; for with her will come all her aunts, uncles, children, cousins, mothers, fathers, and friends. A colony of dandelions grows into a city, and their civilization spreads to all the brave corners of their 1/8 acre world.
But in overcoming her charms, I have released the dandelion’s cunning. After days of constant deflowering at my hands, she has stopped growing straight and tall. Now she hugs to the ground, and hides among the very grass that she seeks to enslave. Only when her snow arrives and her blossoms turn to seeds does she suddenly pop up, seeking the winds that will scatter her children.
It is an intelligent strategy; I can’t always find her, deep under the grass. Twice now I have come across an empty smokestack; the seeds scattered, a chance at life for the dandelions renewed. I can see on the stalk where it had bent and twisted, and hid from me until the last possible moment. These dandelions are smart.
How can that be possible?
Simple: Most living things are hard wired to survive. We humans tend to find these things amusing when we discover them because we often place a premium on our intelligence. I’m actually working on a post on just about that. Humans over value their existence and as such, marvel at the intelligence of lesser beings because we’re so arrogant that we believe we hold a monopoly on intelligence. Would you not concede that many of the things even modern engineers know today were imparted from animals and other lesser creatures? Consider the ants…
Ants have a nervous system. What does the thinking in a dandelion?
Perhaps the dandelion is a merely a biological computer programed by an intelligent source unknown. It sends its unusual form of binary code out into the network of air sun light water nitrogen and so on and then …. voila’ it duplicates a mirror image of it self … just like web pages do from any computer terminal.
Ask an atheist evolutionist biologist what he/she may think
Love this post! I’ve never really taken up gardening (never had a yard) but I have cared for some grass at my grandparent’s place, and they just used to let the dandelions grow, although it meant that we would have to pick all the weeds. Dandelions are beautiful, and I think the effort of picking the weeds is worth having the flower in your garden! Plus, you’re getting a little more exercise.
I like your personification of dandelions by calling them smart (very clever), but we all know that they just attract weeds.