Oh, dear. It has been quite a while since the last post. No excuses but procrastination.
It has been a really lousy winter up here: no snow but rain and utter darkness until last weekend practically. There was snow on Christmas Eve but by the evening of Christmas Day it was all gone again. So we managed to avoid black Christmas – that’s how we call one without snow here – even if just barely.
It get’s really dark here in Finland when there is no snow. There is only a little daylight: the sun rises and sets within hours. Wet ground and vegetation and the low-hanging clouds eat out all light but if there is even a tiny bit of snow on the ground, it reflects the light and brightens up the world. The wet and dark, melancholy conditions have also meant that I haven’t felt like drawing much at all so I don’t have any new drawings to share. Well, to be honest, I do have a few but I need find the energy to scan them first. In the mean time, here’s some less known knowledge about dandelions.
A dandelion is a dandelion, right? Nothing much to it. A common weed. A nuisance even.
Wrong.
The family Taraxacum contains innumerable species, subspecies and apomict microspecies. (Apomixis is a form of parthenogenesis in plants.) A Finnish field manual of plants lists 500 common forms of dandelions in Finland. The following are the most common ones of those 500:
crocodes, balticum, suecicum, fallicinum, fennobalticum, hjeltii, norvegicum, brachyceras, tornense, proxinum, falcatum, pseudofulvum, fulvum, isthimicola, rubicundum, marginatum, limbatum, scanium, croceum, praestans, sagittifolium, maculigerum, naevosum, kuusamoënse, cochleatum, chrysostylum, perattenuatum, galeatum, crassipes, triangulare, revalence, laceratum, pulcherrinum, biformatum, litorale, subhuelphersianum, obtusulum, pallidulum, remotijungum, ostenfeldii, canaliculatum, penicilliforme, speciosum, septentrinale, subpenicilliforme, cyanolepsis, tenebricans, sublaeticolor, porrigens, laciniosum, alatum, ingens, ancistrolobum, pallescens, croceiflorum, piceatum, sellandii, pallipedes, expallidiforme, xanthostigma, latissinum, fasciatum, longisquameum, patens, kjellmanii, obliquilobum, involuvratum, altissimum, subcanescens, hamatum, tumentilobum, reflexilobum, pectinatiforme, retroflexum, murconatum, adiantifrons, amplum, ekmanii, hamatum, cordatum, lucescens, glossocentrum, semiglobosum, angustisquameum, multilobum, imitans, lingulatum, dahlstedii, puolannei, aequilobum and polyodon.
So there you go. The easiest way to tell apart different kinds of dandelions is by the shape of their leaves. And, interestingly, I friend of mine told that the more serrated and rugged the edges of the leaves are, the stronger and more bitter the taste. A crucial piece of information if you are collecting leaves for a salad. And you can use the flowers for mead!
You – if you live in the Northern Hemisphere – have months before summer so there is plenty of time to learn to identify different varieties of dandelions. And they will be everywhere in your neighbourhood this summer too. And an endless subject for those of us who draw.
Jan 22, 2014 @ 19:57:50
I love dandelions and don’t consider them a weed at all. In fact, I celebrate seeing them every summer. I didn’t realize there were so many!
I don’t know how people in Scandinavia manage the light (or lack thereof) in the winter. I refer to January as “the dark depths of January” and struggle to keep my spirits up all winter, even with many more daylight hours than you have in Finland.
Jan 22, 2014 @ 22:23:01
One of the coolest snippets I learned at the UNI while studying ecology was the number of dandelions. They all look so a like if you only look at the flowers but the leaves reveal it all. I think they are weeds only when I’m trying to grow vegetables!
The light things is rather funny: when there’s snow it’s not dark at all! There might not be much sunlight about but what little there is gets reflected and so the world appears to much more brighter that it actually is. Okay, it’s a short day and a long, long twilight, but when the moon is full is magical. It’s, of course, a different story in big cities where there is lot’s of artificial light and you can’t see the stars almost at all. Here in the country is quite something else. In an especially cold night the Milky Way is like a river of diamonds. And then there are the Northern Lights! They can be such a spectacle! Sometimes when they are really intense, you can even hear them and that’s a fact: I have heard them AND it has almost been proven by science. 😉 Hmm, I think I need to make a post about the darkness.
Jan 22, 2014 @ 23:28:58
Yes, do that! It’ll help me feel ever so much better about January.
Mar 18, 2014 @ 14:57:37
How I would love to see the Milky Way again! I haven’t seen it in years. And drawing dandelions is such a great idea. They really require observations!
Mar 18, 2014 @ 21:23:34
It makes me sad to hear that you haven’t seen the Milky Way for years! Everyone on this planet ought to be able to see it. I think something fundamental is lost when we can’t stargaze in darkness. But don’t they say that the stars should be really, really bright in desert. Dare I suggest a weekend trip into deep desert where the sky is equally deep?