Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1499/en

In the leaf axils at the heart of the rosette, the flower buds form as autumn draws near. They overwinter "underground," drawn into the earth in autumn by the contracting root neck. It is a last impulse of movement before the winter rest. In spring, however, in the April nights, the dandelion still develops a kind of vertically shooting stem. With the forces gathered and dammed across the later spring of the previous year, across summer, autumn, and winter, the flower buds shoot upward at the tip of the likewise sap-bearing, hollow, air-filled tubular stem. The flower bud is a small green rounded head, enclosed in several layers of scale-like involucral bracts. Under the warm rays of the rising day they open in succession and fold back downward. Only a few continue to enclose the ray-florets now unfolding from the receptacle (Figure 30).