Taraxacum campylodes

Taraxacum campylodes is a perennial herb in the family Asteraceae belonging to the highly polymorphic Taraxacum officinale aggregate, the common dandelions. The species is native to Europe (especially the Atlantic and central European regions, including Britain and Ireland) and is one of the microspecies recognized within section Ruderalia. Like other dandelions it grows from a stout deep-reaching taproot exuding white milky latex when broken. The leaves are all basal, forming a flat rosette, oblanceolate to oblong, 10-30 cm long, deeply pinnatifid with backward-pointing triangular lobes (the lobes giving the genus its name, from French dent-de-lion); leaf colour and lobing vary considerably between microspecies. The flowering scape is a hollow leafless stalk 5-30 cm tall, bearing a single solitary terminal flower head 3-5 cm across, composed entirely of bright yellow ligulate (ray) florets and surrounded by an involucre of green bracts in two rows, the outer often reflexed downward. The fruit is a beaked achene with a delicate parachute-like pappus of fine white bristles, dispersed by wind in the familiar dandelion clock. Like all Taraxacum it reproduces apomictically, producing seed asexually.