Dandelions of Ballyyahoo

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Dandelions grow everywhere in Ballyyahoo as well as all over Ireland and a lot of the rest of the world.

They are thought to have come here from China and Asia.

The Chinese have some beautiful names for this pretty little flower including the ‘yellow-flowered earth-nail’ and ‘golden hairpin weed.’

Dandelions have lots of other names too like ‘clocks’ ’lowball’ and ‘telltime’ and some that are pretty funny.

The French call it ‘piss-en-lit.’ In Ireland, it is often known as ‘wet-the-bed’ and you can guess why.

You probably think of them as a weed as they grow here, there and everywhere and you can often see them growing in lawns, fields, roadside verges and hedgerows.

When Dandelions go to seed the yellow petals disappear and in their place comes a feather ball of white seeds.

This feather ball is usually blown away by the wind – this is nature making sure the dandelion seeds spread far and wide.

But it is not just the wind that scatters the dandelion seeds sometimes children do this too.

Blowing on a dandelion seed head and watching to see how far those feather seeds blow is fun but did you know that children use to use Dandelion seed heads to tell the time?