SPRING wildflowers are always welcome. Many of us take great pleasure from the showy blooms of daffodils and crocuses when they bloom in our gardens and along the road verges.

However, there is one wildflower that despite its early appearance and show of beautiful sunshine yellow flowers, is never treated with the same feeling of joy as the daffodils when it opens its flowers to brighten our spring days. It is never planted, no one will buy a bunch to brighten their homes and many people will even destroy it.

I have even seen garden centres selling special implements and chemicals to help folk eradicate it and I'm not totally sure why.

Dandelions are common, growing in abundance on road side verges and hedgerows, and despite our best efforts in our gardens, and I guess it is this persistence to thrive despite our quite determined attempts in our gardens have earned this plant its bad reputation.

However, before the days when a well kept lawn or neat "weed free" vegetable patches was seen as a reflection on one's character, dandelions were seen as a much valued plant.

It is one of the first plants of spring and as such it was seen as a much valued food rich in vitamin A.

Even these days you can sometimes see dandelion appearing in amongst other salad greens.

It was also viewed as a very important medicinal herb and records of its use can be found going way back in historic records. The dandelion is absent from the southern hemisphere but is spread throughout the northern. People from different cultures have made use of the medicinal properties of the dandelion, and in particular the root.

Ecologically, dandelion is important as it flowers so early in the year and each flower is loaded with a disproportionately large amount of sweet nectar.

You can smell this sugary sweetness if you take a good sniff.

Obviously, this nectar is an inducement for insects to visit the flower, pick up and distribute its pollen but its bulk of early and consistent (dandelions bloom early and continue to bloom right through into autumn) nectar fuels almost 100 different insects species that depend on it. This is something not missed by beekeepers who are amongst the few that welcome the dandelion.

Dandelions themselves are really interesting to look at. They are never boring; their flowers on a second look are really beautiful. The flowers once pollinated fruit into fantastic fluffy globes of equally beautiful airborne seeds that drift delightfully on warm summer breezes.

There are some 250 different species of dandelions and each individual is subtly different, making identification of the individual species a job for the experts.

It also turns out that experts have not quite agreed why a dandelion is called a dandelion.

I always thought it related to the flower looking like a rather showy lion's mane, however it actually stems from the French name for the plant, dent de lion, which means lion's teeth; the debate is which bit of the plant most looks like lion's teeth, the jagged leaves or the long pointed and white root.

So next time you see a dandelion, spare it a second look and take a moment to marvel at one of nature's often over-looked masterpieces.