Taraxacum
genus of plants
Taraxacum () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae which consists of species commonly known as dandelions. The scientific and hobby study of the genus is known as taraxacology. The genus has a near-cosmopolitan distribution, absent only from tropical and polar areas. Two of the most common species worldwide, T. officinale (the common dandelion) and T. erythrospermum (the red-seeded dandelion), are European species introduced into North America, where they are non native. Dandelions thrive in temperate regions and can be found in yards, gardens, sides of roads, among crops, and in many other habitats.
Like other members of the family Asteraceae, they have very small flowers collected together into a composite flower head. Each single flower in a head is called a floret. In part due to their abundance, along with being a generalist species, dandelions are one of the most vital early spring nectar sources for a wide host of pollinators. Many Taraxacum species produce seeds asexually by apomixis, where the seeds are produced without pollination, resulting in offspring that are genetically identical to the parent plant.
Etymology
The Latin name Taraxacum derives from the Arabic tarakhshaqūn, meaning "bitter herb".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Taraxacum” is genus of plants. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Taraxacum, genus and plants, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30024. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Taraxacum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.