Do Dandelions Grow On Your Planet, Too?

      I've been wondering since the pandemic and January 6th if maybe I'd wandered into the wrong dimension or been sent to some kind of Hell put together by the lowest bidder, but never really all that seriously....

     At least, not until yesterday, when I went on a walking inspection of the grounds and outside equipment at the North Campus.

     Nice, sunny weather, freshly mowed grass along the lanes sprinkled with dandelions.  Dandelions, but something was off.  They seemed paler than usual, more a light lemon yellow than sunny yellow.  I took a closer look and had to look again, and then at other examples: every plant had multiple flowers on a single stem.  I shivered.  There were several stems on each plant, like a normal dandelion, but the flowers were wrong and the more I looked, the wronger they got.  The leaves were hairy and rounded, and a darker green.

     Dimensional portal?  Wrong planet?  Nope.  Catsears.

     Hypochaeris radicata, if you want to get technical about it.  A relative of the dandelion.  The common name is because of the leaves, furry and with a rounded point, like a cat's ears.

     I have never seen them at the site before but we've got them now, and plenty of them.  They're all over the U.S. and you might not notice they were anything but regular dandelions, out the window of a moving car.