Taraxacum

In the days when people where trying to find out how to determine longitude, everyone knew you needed some kind of universal clock that was constant everwhere. That way you could determine noon in London no matter where you were, even at sea. By comparing your noon to London's noon you could calculate longitude and not run your ship into various islands or continents and have to come back to London looking like a dork. For a while people tried to use the regularity of the motion of moons around Jupiter as proposed by Galileo, but try to find them when your ship is going up and down, or in the day. Finally some dude invented a good clock and got to go on London's Greatest Inventors--The Reality Show.

I digress. Taraxacum is the second season of the year. The whole first paragraph means: You can compare YOUR season Taraxacum with MY season because I have found the universal clock--the day that dandelions bloom, and they bloom EVERYWHERE, unless you live on the ocean like Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

It begins when Taraxacum vulgare and Glechoma heteracea bloom. This year that date was May 3. Last year that date was 4.15. It was a long cold April. The season ends when the last dandelion fruits have blown away.

http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Dandelion.html

http://www.ppws.vt.edu/scott/weed_id/glehe.htm