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Species Image Gallery (opens in a new window) |
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| THE SUNFLOWER FAMILY | |||||||||
| The sunflowers are found around the
globe in many different places, from temperate climates, like in Saskatchewan,
to mountains or in dry regions. The sunflower family is very large and contains
about 19,000 species! As you can imagine, the plants in this family can
look very different from one another. The sunflowers can be shrubs or herbs,
with many different leaf shapes and flower colours. One thing that is common
to all sunflowers is the type of flower arrangement. In this family, there
are many flowers grouped together into a head, like the one you see on a
daisy. It looks like one flower from a distance, but when you get close
you will see that it is actually made up of many, small flowers. The head
may have ray flowers on the outside and disc flowers on the inside, or only
one of the two kinds. Many of the seeds, like the dandelion, have a fluffy
structure attached to the seed. This is called the pappus and helps the
seeds to spread in the wind. You probably know a lot of plants in the sunflower family. Sunflowers can be plants you eat or plants that you may grow in the yard. For example, did you know that lettuce is from the sunflower family? So are the marigolds in the garden! Maybe you have heard of Echinacea? It is a plant in the sunflower family that is used to make medicine. Some of the sunflowers are also weeds, like the dandelion. |
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| FLESHY DANDELION | |||||||||
| LATIN NAME: Taraxacum officinale ssp. ceratophorum | |||||||||
| WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? | |||||||||
| Fleshy dandelion is 10 to 25 cm tall. The stem has no leaves, is hollow, and has a white milky sap when broken. The stem can be straw-coloured to reddish at the top or base. The leaves are all in a basal rosette. The edges of the leaves are toothed or lobed and are spiny. There is only one head per plant. The heads have three rows of bracts. The outer two rows are straw-coloured to brown and the inner row is green and may have a black tip and a horn-like appendage. The ray flowers are sulphur to orange-yellow and disc flowers are absent. The fruits are brown, grey, olive or black and have small bumps. The pappus is white or creamy coloured. | |||||||||
| WHERE DOES IT GROW? | |||||||||
| Fleshy dandelion grows in open woods, rocky slopes, thickets, drying meadows and muskegs. | |||||||||
| WHERE IS IT FOUND IN SASKATCHEWAN? | |||||||||
| This plant is found throughout Saskatchewan in these ecoregions: Cypress Upland, Moist Mixed Grassland, Boreal Transition, Churchill River Upland, Tazin Lake Upland, and Selwyn Lake Upland. | |||||||||
| WHY IS IT RARE? | |||||||||
| Fleshy dandelion is vulnerable in Saskatchewan because it almost always grows in very small groups. | |||||||||
| HOW TO IDENTIFY FLESHY DANDELION | |||||||||
| * Do the leaves have spiny edges? * Do the fruits have bumps on them? * Is the stem without leaves? * Did you find it in open woods, thicket, drying meadow, on a rocky slope, or in a muskeg? | |||||||||
| If you answered yes to all of these questions, you may have found fleshy dandelion! | |||||||||
