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 Dandelions

Dandelions

A Short Reader

Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 5 to 6
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   5.52

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    happening, medicinal, parachute, puffy, legend, multiply, beginning, form, during, however, lawns, signal, longer, difficult, familiar, important

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Dandelions
By Sheri Skelton 		  
1     Pick a puffy dandelion parachute. Make a wish and blow. If all the seeds blow away at once your wish will come true. That's what an old legend says. What really is happening is that the seeds are being scattered so that new dandelions will grow.
 
2     Dandelions are very common plants. Sometimes they are called blowballs. They might also be called lion's tooth. The word dandelion comes from the French "dent de lion," which means lion's tooth. Their yellow flowers are a familiar sight on green lawns during the summer. Dandelions like the sun. Their flowers open up in the morning and close during the late afternoon. Each dandelion flower is really many tiny flowers called florets. All of the florets together make up one flower head.
 
3     As the dandelion becomes older, it no longer opens in the morning. The flower remains closed. Seeds begin to form at the end of each floret where it attaches to the stem of the dandelion. The yellow petals dry up and fall off. A fluffy parachute begins to grow. The seeds open, and the fluffy parachute gets bigger. The wind comes along. It scatters the fluffy parachutes through the air. The fluffy parachutes can travel a long way. The parachutes come apart, and the feathery seeds drift down to the ground. These floating seeds are called dandelion snow. The seeds fall to the ground, and new plants begin to grow.

Paragraphs 4 to 5:
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