My Dandelion Manifesto

[wildskyflower]

Yeah it is complicated and interesting behavior that it would be interesting to see more studies about. It’s been a while since I looked at the literature, but I think maybe the ones that don’t produce pollen probably aren’t old at all, like less than a few hundred years. One would expect the purely asexual lineages would be particularly susceptible to going extinct, unless some regulatory factor can turn their ability to produce pollen back on under certain circumstances. I guess many species have individuals which are sterile, so maybe it is not surprising that that happens in taraxacum, just unusual that the sterile individuals can survive asexually for centuries instead of a single organism’s lifetime.