Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1494/en

In contrast to the "sal pole" of the taproot, the mercurial middle of shoot and leaf in the dandelion — with the transition occurring in the upper root rhizome — dams itself into a pronounced leaf rosette (Figure 32, p. 423). The stem sits locked in the root neck and remains dammed for the whole of the plant's life, while the life-formative forces shoot with force into the spirally arranged, densely crowded leaves. The leaves lie close to the ground — in winter wholly so; in spring they raise themselves. The young leaves growing from the heart of the rosette stand erect, only to sink back gradually, as they age, down into the plane of the rosette, drawing nearer to the earth. While in this way new leaves — around a hundred of them — go on forming from spring through into autumn, the oldest ones die away on the underside of the rosette.