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Q&A
Q. Rather than digging out dandelions in my lawn, I just pull off the flower heads and buds.
Will this work?
A. Common dandelions, or Taraxacum officinale, are born of a tenacious breed of plant, better equipped than most to survive and propagate, gardening authorities agree. The accepted wisdom is that removing the root system or using a broad-leaf herbicide are the only ways to defeat them.
But the central root grows very deep, usually half a foot to 18 inches but sometimes 10 or 15 feet, and the temptation is to seek a shortcut. Pulling off flower heads, known to gardeners as deadheading, can encourage more shoots and buds, as it directs the plant’s resources from the developing flower and back to the infrastructure.
In ornamental plants, deadheading is usually done after the flower has germinated and become unattractive, but the removal of flowers and buds at any time can have the same effect. With dandelions in particular, deadheading seems to only encourage a more vigorous growth of the crown of leaves growing concentrically around the top of the central root. New flower stalks soon follow. Even cutting off the entire crown at or below the soil level does not discourage the plant from regenerating and vigorously producing new shoots, stalks and flowers, if a mere inch of root is left behind. The plants can survive and grow for years.
To frustrate weeders further, there are anecdotal reports that the pulled-off flowers can continue to produce viable seeds if picked at the right stage and left on the lawn. And it takes only a single winged seed from the compound flower, produced by one of the hundred or more segments of the mature dandelion flower, to produce the next dandelion. The seeds do not even have to be pollinated.
The bottom line is that dandelion removal still requires radical surgery or chemical warfare. question@nytimes.com
Questions of general interest will be answered, but requests for medical advice cannot be honored and unpublished letters cannot be answered individually.
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