As a relatively new homeowner, I guess I’m supposed to hate dandelions. It’s true that I’ve pulled hundreds of them from our small lawn and I keep my weed fork and gloves at the ready to pluck sunny intruders from the pebble driveway. But with every pale root I pull from the dirt with a satisfying pop, my fascination with this not-quite flower grows. Now see them freakin’ everywhere.

Dandelions would take over the world if they could, I thought on a recent visit to a local park that’s infested with them. Even Walmart parking lots are no match. Dandelions top my list for species that will survive the apocalypse.

Which is cool because they’re edible. Martha Stewart says so; you can, technically, fry the heads and cook the greens. But after trying it this spring, I don’t recommend it.

Even with the most buttery batter in the world, the heads still taste like dandelions. The greens were meh. The very next morning, a TruGreen truck pulled up and sprayed our next door neighbor’s lawn, a reminder that some serious poisons are being pumped into eradicating the species. Which is not going to happen.

Once an invasive species takes root (and taraxacum are invasive to North America; thanks, Europe) it’s hard to push back because something about its nature and behavior gives it the ability to adapt to its surroundings and thrive in a range of circumstances.

So with the dandelion we have not only a nearly cosmopolitan presence on Earth (they live everywhere on the planet except in polar and tropical climates…and I suppose in the oceans), they have trailing them a rich history of names and folklore. In French, it’s the dent de lion, for the jagged teeth on the leaves.

They’re also known as blow balls, witch’s gowan, and pissenlit (piss the bed). They’re a diuretic and they reproduce asexually through cloning. They’re terrific for pollinators and determined to outsmart me. Cornell physicists (inspired by walks with a toddler) found that dandelion fluff is shaped to blow off more easily in an updraft than in a down draft, minimizing competition and maximizing spread.

Yay, little dandelions, I think, listening to the researchers’ wonder at their discovery. Then I remember my driveway.

I can’t remember which came first, my fictional impulse or my fascination, but dandelions show up in a short story I’m writing about an astronomer who studies exoplanets. I love the contrast between the vast universe she examines with a powerful telescope and the dandelions dominating her front yard – dandelions being the most Earth-bound thing I can think of.

Thrive: Dandelions exemplify the concept. I’ve been having fun playing with a character on a quest to find signs of life in the universe at the same time battling the irrepressible (not to mention edible) life form with its claws in the earth just outside her door.