Happy National Dandelion Day! -April 5th

If your on social media I'm sure you've seen memes telling you to keep your dandelions for the bees and other pollinators. That dandelions are an early source of food for bees in the cold spring, if you kill the dandelions- you're killing the bees!… And I'm sure you've also seen some memes negating that, pointing out that dandelions are not native to North America and we don't need them. That there are many other more important spring plants for the bees to eat. 

So what should you do?

First of all, let's talk about the dandelion, one of the more known and recognizable plants in the world. True the dandelions are not native to the Americans, brought over with Europeans like so many other plants and animals here now. They are an amazing source of food for animals and humans alike and a great nitrogen fixing plant that can naturally restore soil without chemicals. So not only are they important for farmers and make a great wine, they are beautiful and one of the first spring flowers to bloom. 

So why do we hate them?

For that answer we can thank the green grass lawn and marketing. With the Americans exodus from city life into suburban life came the status symbol of the perfect green lawn. The amount of time and money that Americans pour into this purely ascetic waste of space is amazing. Nature has a way of always fixing itself, so as suburbanites killed the soil in front of their homes, the dandelions came in to correct the soil balance (which would help your lawn grow better too). But the Joneses’ lawn is perfectly green, and mine has yellow flowers on it… 

The Dandelion quickly became the mascot for all “weeds”, along with the logos for weed killers, herbicides and pesticides. The dandelion is pictured on almost every cancer causing bottle of spray today. They never show it dead, always alive and beautiful, the way we like it, (if we saw the flowers dead and shriveled up, we wouldn't wanna buy that product.) 

-WEED

So are dandelions needed for the bees?

As many blooming flowers as possible are needed to save the bees, including the dandelion. There are two main points for this internet debate that I can see:

1- “Dandelions are getting too much attention over native flowers”. If I made a post telling people to leave the creeping phlox for the bees… I just lost your attention. Close your eyes and picture a creeping phlox. I'll wait. What color is it? 90% of Americans have no idea. Now close your eyes and picture a dandelion! 95% of Americans have a vivid photo in their heads, maybe a personal memory. The same way the dandelion is a good mascot for herbicides, it's also a good mascot for saving the bees.

2- People are more likely to spray weed-killers on dandelions than other flowers. We have been bombarded with advertising telling us that dandelions are bad weeds we should kill for our whole lives. We need a cultural shift about “weeds” and it might need to start with the dandelions. 

If you don't like dandelions in your lawn, go pull them out. Pulling them out will not harm the bees, there are plenty of other flowers around, but DO NOT spray them. All weed-killers are dangerous to bees. If they don't kill the healthy adult bees foraging, the poison laced pollen and nectar might kill the babies back at the nest. 

The people making memes about saving dandelions to save the bees are correct, the people saying dandelions aren't important to bees are also correct! Both sides need to see that they are on the same side and need to work together. We all want to save bees and plants and our earth, so we need to address the problem from many different angles. The dandelions that we celebrate today, April 5th, are a good mascot for a shift in social understanding in my opinion. 

Do you think dandelions are weeds?