The dandelion is a perennial, herbaceous plant with long, lance-shaped leaves. They are deeply toothed, which gave the plant its name in Old French: Dent-de-lion.
The dandelion’s well-known yellow, composite flowers are 2 to 5 cm wide. They grow individually on hollow flower stalks 5 to 50 cm tall. Each flower head consists of hundreds of tiny ray flowers. The flower head can change into the familiar, white, globular seed head overnight. Each seed has a tiny parachute, to spread far and wide in the wind.
The thick, brittle, beige, branching taproot grows up to 25 cm long. All parts of this plant exude a white milky sap when broken.