Taraxacum isophyllum

Taraxacum isophyllum is a dandelion microspecies within the large Taraxacum officinale aggregate. Like other members of the group it is a rosette-forming perennial herb growing from a stout, deep, milky-juiced taproot. The leaves are all basal, oblanceolate in outline and more or less regularly lobed or runcinate, forming a flat rosette pressed to the ground. Solitary bright yellow composite flower heads of strap-shaped ligulate florets are borne on hollow, leafless, latex-bearing scapes. The fruit is an achene topped with a slender beak bearing a parachute-like white pappus that aids wind dispersal, the heads forming the familiar spherical "clock." As an apomictic microspecies it reproduces largely by seed without fertilisation, producing uniform offspring. It occupies grassland, meadows, roadsides and disturbed ground.