{"id":92889,"date":"2019-06-30T15:46:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T22:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/why-you-might-want-to-leave-those-dandelions-alone"},"modified":"2019-06-30T15:46:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T22:46:29","slug":"why-you-might-want-to-leave-those-dandelions-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/why-you-might-want-to-leave-those-dandelions-alone","title":{"rendered":"Why you might want to leave those dandelions alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/why-you-might-want-to-leave-those-dandelions-alone2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nothing can threaten a velvety green lawn like vagabond dandelions\u2014but it isn\u2019t all bad, says a University of Alberta gardening expert.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, people may want to actually welcome the fluffy yellow blooms into their yards, said Ken Willis, head of horticulture at the U of A Botanic Garden.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s starting to be a lot more argument that they should be kept because of what they can do for pollinators. Ecologically they are becoming very important as a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/food+source\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">food source<\/a> for domestic and wild species of bees, particularly in early spring because they grow so soon. Butterflies and moths also feed on them as a source of sugar, and some species of birds feed on <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/dandelion\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">dandelion<\/a> seeds,\u201d said Willis, who leaves room for the hardy plant in <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/natural+areas\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">natural areas<\/a> in the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/botanic+garden\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">botanic garden<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing can threaten a velvety green lawn like vagabond dandelions\u2014but it isn\u2019t all bad, says a University of Alberta gardening expert. In fact, people may want to actually welcome the fluffy yellow blooms into their yards, said Ken Willis, head of horticulture at the U of A Botanic Garden. \u201cThere\u2019s starting to be a lot [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}