Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Inside each of its tiny flowers the anthers are fused edge to edge into a tube through which the {style} pushes, and the {ovary} sits below the {corolla} rather than above it. What passes for a single flower is a crowd of dozens of tiny stalkless flowers packed side by side on one shared platform, the whole cluster cupped below in a collar of green {bracts}. That green collar is built in two ranks: the inner {bracts} stand upright against the head while the outer rank bends sharply back and down the stalk. Every flowering stalk is hollow, leafless and unbranched, rising straight from a flat ground-hugging {rosette} to carry exactly one head. Break any part of it, leaf or {taproot} or flowering stalk, and bitter white {latex} bleeds from the wound. Most of its seed is set without any pollination at all through {apomixis}, so the embryos are clones of the parent, and a single plant can throw 2,000 to 15,000 of them in a year. Its leaves lie flat in a rosette, 2 to 16 inches (5 to 40 cm) long and cut into sharp triangular lobes that all point back toward the base. It grows from sea level to about 12,000 feet (3,600 m), has naturalised on every inhabited continent, and has been recorded even near research stations in Antarctica. The genus name reached European botany through medieval Arabic, from a word for a bitter herb. The species epithet marks it as a plant of the apothecary's storeroom, one kept on the shelf as a working medicine. Its roasted {taproot} is ground as a caffeine-free coffee substitute, its flowers are fermented into a country wine, its young leaves are sold as a bitter salad crop, and its ripe seed head is the white sphere 1 to 1.5 inches (2.5 to 4 cm) across that children blow apart to tell the time.

Accepted Answer

Taraxacum officinale

Name That Plant #088