Ages ago I saw that Will's Cigarettes had done a series of wild flower cigarette cards with one being a dandelion and i've been on the look out ever since to try and find either a single card or a complete album. I was in the wonderful Preston Flea Market the other week and on a stall selling old postcards, books and magazines i found a copy of a complete album!
An Album of Wild Flowers, Second Series was issued in 1937 by WD & HO Wills (branch of the Imperial Tobacco Company) priced at one penny. The dandelion is number 25 out of the 50 cards in the set.
The description is this: Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), Thistle family. Were it not so common and a weed so difficult to eradicate, this would be considered a beautiful flower. Although it can be found in bloom during a great part of the year its main flowering time is in spring, when it often turns fields and waysides into a blaze of gold. The origin of the name Dandelion is somewhat uncertain, for although it means "Lion's tooth", like the other botanical names which have been used for it - Leontodon dens-leonis - it is not agreed whether it is the lobes of the leaf or in the tips of the florets that the resemblance occurs.
