Today my husband spotted this curly dandelion stem hiding in the grass… When I saw it I was immediately reminded of when I as a child separated dandelion stems into long strips and soaked them in water just to watch them curl.
The curling is caused by a simple biological mechanism: The inside of the stem is hydrophilic (water-loving) causing the cells on the inside to swell up, as they absorb water, the cells on the outside of the stem stays the same. If a stem is separated into strips and then exposed to wather the increasing size of the cells on the one side of the strip will cause it to contort and turn into these tight curls.
