Sven Damerow, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

To celebrate Garland’s 10th year, we have selected the dandelion, a symbol of endurance, as our flower of 2025.

A different flower marks every year of Garland. This year, it’s the dandelion. In many cultures, the dandelion is a symbol of endurance. Greek goddess Hecate used dandelions to help protect crossroads. In East Asia, it is associated with perseverance. In Europe, its capacity to bloom annually despite its fragility is seen as a sign of endurance.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki writes about the “dandelion clock” as a symbol of the Param Sendai (“winds from Sendai”) movement that sought to build connections between Japan and the “people of the South”: it is “an apt image for Japan’s “invisible civil society” as a whole. Groups are small and dispersed, like dandelions, pushing their shoots up, often through unfertile terrain. Like dandelions, they too are often short-lived, but their disappearance should not necessarily be read as failure. When members scatter, they take ideas and experiences with them. Who knows where the seeds fall or how they will germinate.”

“Farewell in the Spring Breeze” (春风别)
By an unknown Tang poet

“The dandelion drifts without a root,
Like travelers yearning for distant homelands.
The spring breeze carries their fragile dreams,
Scattered across the vast fields and streams.”

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2016. “Asianisms from Below: Japanese Civil Society and Visions of Asian Integration from the Late 20th to the 21st Century.” In Asianisms: Regionalist Interactions and Asian Integration, edited by Nicola Spakowski Marc Frey. NUS Press.

Tags

dandelion