The Coltsfoot is a very common plant. You find it all over the country,
and along with the Celandine it is one of the first flowers to appear in
spring. The flowers come out before the leaves. They grow singly at the
end of straight, woolly stalks which have many little pink scale-like
leaves, from top to bottom. When the flowers are withering, their heads
begin to droop; but when the downy seed-ball is ready to open, the
flower-stalks stand straight up again.
The flowers are bright yellow, and like the Daisy and Dandelion, which
belong to the same family, they are made up of a great many tiny tubes
grouped close together. Those tubes round the edge have a long, narrow,
yellow strap at the outside.
After the flowers are withered, the seeds remain at the end of the
stalk, and each seed sends out a tuft of beautiful, straight, white down
which forms a delicate ball as in the Dandelion. But the Coltsfoot
down-ball is neither so starry nor so beautiful as that of the
Dandelion.
The leaves of the Coltsfoot are entirely covered with cotton wool when
they are small; as they grow bigger, they become glossy grey-green
above, and are white only underneath.
Each leaf is nearly round, with beautiful pointed scollops at the edge,
and it has a long stalk.