www.dandelion society.org
 

The Dandelion Society believes in the power of the ordinary to be extra ordinary and of the natural to be wonder full.

The Dandelion Society sees both benefit and beauty in items of everyday life, such as the prolific, edible, and golden plant named for the teeth of the lion.

 The sun bright dandelion, which is often condemned because of familiarity and profusion, serves as symbol of the Society, which looks to the useful values of common things and practices.
 
 

Mission Statement:

Most of the problems facing the world today are a result of misguided values. The hatred of the beautiful, easily grown, and useful dandelion is a classic example. We poison the soil and water in the process of killing a plant that a Japanese poet called "gold coins thrown on the lawn." The understanding of human values in relation to dandelions can shed light on our relations to the larger world and thereby hopefully change them.
 
 

Historical Views on Misguided Values 

What greater stupidity can be imagined than that of calling jewels, silver, and gold "precious" and soil "base?" People who do this ought to remember that if there were as great a scarcity of soil as of jewels and precious metals, there would not be a prince who would not spend a bushel of diamonds and rubies and a cartload of gold just to have enough earth to plant a jasmine in a little pot, or to sow an orange seed and watch it spout, grow, and produce its handsome leaves, its fragrant flowers, and fine fruit. It is scarcity and plenty that make the vulgar take things to be precious or worthless. 
Galileo Galilei,
Dialogue.

"To see the World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower"...
William Blake 
 
 
 

DANDELION: King of Blooms
Dent de lion, tooth of the lion,
You are called a common weed,
For jagged teeth leaves and yellow disk blossoms
Send forth bountiful airborne gossamer seed.

It's the Commons that rule the Lords;
Man's mortality is homaged by widow weeds
Common Prayer sustains our belief, and communion, our faith; 
People grow like weeds, and they honor flourishing seeds.

How then, when your leaves are edible and your corona sun bright
And children gather you for their bouquets of delight,
Dare we condemn your lion's teeth to garden doom
Instead of praising nature for your golden bloom?

Joan Stidham Nist,
Sparrow Flight