Dandelions

Have you ever noticed that there are commonly held beliefs that could have gone the other way—beliefs that only work because we all just go along?

Take gold. Why did gold get to be such a big deal? It does not turn a lovely green when exposed to the air, like copper. It is not hard, like iron. It is reasonably nice-looking, shines up well—but still. Those ads come on TV, sponsored by the “World Gold Council”—such a full-of-itself outfit—purporting to show sophisticated, youngish, rich men sleeping well because they have “invested in gold.” This only works if we all agree that gold is some super thing, not just another metal. I mean, why not silver? Silver is also nice, but gold—oh no, gold is the real deal. Gold is the gold standard. Just because we agree to agree about that.

Apparently, this agreement came about because gold is nice and shiny and also scarce to exactly the right degree. But we did have to agree.

Now land. Land is a thing we put a dollar value on, so long as there seems to be not quite enough to go around. We have to plunk ourselves down on a patch of land because we are no longer physically fit enough to manage the nomadic lifestyle, and we have so much stuff we are bogged down. At this point, we have to hoard our own piece of land, erect a dwelling on it—or just adopt the dwelling put there by a previous hoarder of the piece of land. The previous snail’s shell. We can’t actually move the land anywhere—all we can own is the right not to share a particular piece of turf. We own squatting rights.

What if we decided to change our minds about gold, the way those European speculators did to bring a halt to the Dutch tulip bulb mania? In 1637, just before the bubble burst, some individual tulip bulbs were purportedly selling for 2,500 florins—the equivalent of $50,000 or $60,000 US in today’s dollars. The wild tulip mania crashed down to nothing. The tulip bulbs became just tulip bulbs. What if gold became just gold-coloured metal? Wouldn’t you feel silly if you had bars of it under your bed, now worth no more than the pounds of butter in your fridge—suddenly useful only as doorstops? What if someone figures out how to make lab gold, as they now make lab diamonds?

Which brings me to dandelions—and the flower pecking order. To give them some context, one day in 1804, William Wordsworth was wandering lonely as a cloud when all at once he saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils. Now we would all agree that daffodils are very nice, but I want to point out that dandelions are exactly the same colour as those lovely daffodils.

Furthermore, they plant themselves! A host of golden dandelions. They are hardy. They put down fabulous long roots. They proliferate. And they are ever so jaunty to look at, coming to life every spring when the other hothouse flowers don’t dare to step outside.

And after the initial glorious blooming has reached its apotheosis (I had to look up how to spell that—I am getting high-flown here), the dandelion produces a fabulous head bursting with lighter-than-air white fluff.

I think we could all just agree that dandelions are wonderful, instead of holding the currently, rampantly held belief—opinion—that dandelions are unpleasant plants. Why are we so dismissive of dandelions? As you probably know, the save-the-bees people are now urging us not to cut down the dandelions in the spring—that insects need what they have to offer.

Naming dandelions as “weeds” is just name-calling. Think of the thistle—another so-called weed. Yet it has such a lovely flower, so gorgeous. And you complain about the thorns? May I point out that that big shot, the rose, is on a bush covered with lethal thorns?

Just because a bunch of people all agree on something—gold, dandelions, who has the correct skin colour—doesn’t mean they are correct.

Let’s at least just call the dandelion a wildflower, because that is surely what it is.