PURPLE DANDELION
Plants with milky juice; all flowers strap-shaped, in dense heads, surrounded by involucral bracts; corolla 5-lobed; stamens 5; ovary inferior.
Purple Dandelion. Flowering Straw (Lygodesmia texana) can nearly always be found in the prairie sections of the state from spring to fall, but the lovely flowers seldom make a showy display along the roadsides. Only one head blooms at a time on the slender forking stems, and that remains open only in the mornings. The heads are made up of 8-12 pale purple strap-shaped corollas, with the lavender styles conspicuously erect in the center. The tip of the corolla is divided into five minute lobes. The stems are almost leafless but have a cluster of short-lobed, narrow gray-green leaves at the base.
Small-Flowered Straw (Ptiloria pauciflora) is a white-flowered chicory with low spreading stems. It is abundant in West Texas and New Mexico.
FALSE DANDELION
Many-Stemmed False Dandelion (Sitilias multicaulis) has lemon-yellow flower heads which closely resemble those of the true dandelion, but the plants grow much taller and are often widely branched. From early spring through June, the false dandelion is very abundant on the coastal and western prairies. The heads are made up of several rows of strap-shaped corollas. The fruits are narrow and have attached a spreading tuft of bristles which makes the head in fruit look like a puff ball of lace. This tuft is a parachute device for scattering the seeds far and wide.
White Dandelion (Pinaropappus roseus) has flower heads very much like those of the yellow dandelions, but the flowers vary in color from white to pale pink, and the heads are larger. It is very abundant in March and April in Southwest-Central Texas.
Several garden plants belong to the chicory family, among them being lettuce, salsify, and chicory. The orange hawkweed is often cultivated for ornament.