Fleur d’horloge

The magic in the everyday is something that personally fuels the spirit. I find, though, that ya gotta be open to it, and I admit that many times with my head being elsewhere I miss out. I like to believe that I work at it though; eyes wide open to the smallest of things that often turn out to be colossal spirit medicine; an uplifting antidote to the merry-go-round of present day news cycles.

Something motivated me yesterday. I stooped to the ground and picked a puffball. Ya a puffball, you know the ones? They are everywhere at this time of year; on every lawn and field and bordering every highway. It’s the flower that the Gallic Normans of 1066 described as the ‘dent-de-lion’—mind you I’ve always had trouble imagining the dandelion as the tooth of a lion but then again I’ve never been that upclose so really, what do I know? ‘Chacun a son gout’ I guess we could say.

Cankerwort, Irish daisy, monk’s head: it’s no rose, but a dandelion ‘by any other name would smell as sweet’ to borrow a line from Shakespeare. What I refer to as a puffball is the spent flower when the fields take on the look of a million nests in a chicken coop, feather beds everywhere.

Holding a puffball up to the sun I’m reminded of nature’s architecture, a geodesic dome in miniature where rising from each of the hundreds of seeds which are tethered to the bald headed moon-like surface of the inner flower is an umbrella— again in ultra miniature—that has been turned inside out and transformed into a parachute-like affair of fine cotton, ready to launch to next year’s pastures as soon as—much like Cape Canaveral—the breeze and the seed negotiate a date for blast off.

Calm atmospheric and sunlight conditions that allow for uplift as in air ballooning apparently are the trick for success in order to navigate to the neighbour’s yard. Few seeds barely make it over the fence as I’m sure many go on about every spring as they attempt to get at dandelion tap root that without #%*!* doubt is anchored to the centre of the earth. But hang on a moment. The good news for some, I’m told, is that one in a thousand seeds will sail way over yonder, at least a kilometre away from your tulip bed. Now how they can track a dandelion seed flight pattern and report about it? Its gotta be a summer work project, or more likely rocket science I figure?

You see, there’s no doubt that it’s the plant’s tenacity that aggravates some, but the prolific flower that has both native and non-native strains has a whole lot of friends. You can enjoy it in salads, leaf, flower and all as it is rich in vitamins—twice the potassium as cabbage as one for-instance; try deep fried flowers or blended into cookies or pancakes or made into jelly. Mostly the seed was brought to North America to be planted in medicinal gardens and monasteries for its importance to cure scurvy and as a diuretic.

On the latter effect I remember one sunny spring day years ago in a large inner city park coming upon a group of women harvesting dandelion from the side of a hill. Having little acquaintance with the properties of dandelion aside from making wine or the roasting of its dried root to savour as coffee, I simply had to know how they used it. They began to laugh and talk amongst themselves when I inquired; the women were from the Asian community so I was out of the loop understanding the to-ing and fro-ing and what perhaps the chuckling was all about. “Make you pee!” Finally came the definitive answer from the lady in red pants wearing a traditional conical rice-harvesters hat: “Pu gong yi” was the poetic sounding follow-up from the lady behind sunglasses.

Soooo the Mandarin ‘pu gong yi’ translated to ‘general process’ began to explain the broad properties and use of the dandelion through the ages in traditional Chinese and Native American medicine.

It is used as a comparative modern day “water pill” to aid liver and kidney ailments and high blood pressure. And maybe why nonappreciators of the lowly dandelion tend to get a little peed off with the flower’s presence do ya think? Just sayin’?

Okay, about the idea of the fleur d’horloge as it was known to us as kids. It was called the clock flower on the English side of town, but was the same game. You gently brought the puffball close to your lips, preferably just upwind from your buddy if you were in a vengeful mood. Then you blew on it and whichever side of the puffball grew a bald spot was supposed to tell the hour position on the clock; in theory alright, but in reality it was time to vamoose if your friend got a face full of dandelion ‘cotton’.

I know, you say, a weird way to remember the dandelion puffball, but stranger things chase about my mind and I find as one ages that ‘weird’ is not so bad a way to remember important life details that can be brought up in cocktail conversation at the drop of a hat. Seems to happen anyway.