Admitting that I know a fair number of older women who take care of their yards... If you called 'em "Dandelion Laws", limited them to invasives that easily spread to neighbors' yards and were a PITA for those neighbors to keep under control, and cultivated a group of older ladies who were willing to show up and complain loudly at the occasional City Council meeting - then it might be surprisingly easy to do. At least in upscale and wanna-be-upscale areas.
I would note that dandelions are not considered invasive in most of the United States. They're non-invasive exotics instead. Considered beneficial actually.
I see native bumblebees feeding on a lot of what busybodies would label as weeds and try to regulate away. This approach would just be asking for heavy use of pesticides to maintain monoculture grass.
As an owner of and neighbor to many of the standard protagonist monoculture lawns being discussed here, I would also caution against this concept due to how it will be managed; copious amounts of pesticides more than is already being used is what will happen. I try to handle weeds by mowing frequently enough they never get to maturity and so my neighbors are sending dandelions into my yard, I don’t fight it, I just make sure they never get tall enough to bloom or cast seeds from my area. They’re so hard to keep away, I would have to put down full coverage pesticide if I was trying to fight their very existence on my property.
My neighbors aren’t even that neglectful. Yet you see it ever. If I had to guess the largest producer of dandelion diaspora are schools and parks and some of the medians in my city along with random patches of “low maintenance”/ vacant land. It’s also windy where I live so it just travels far.
I've managed to remove dandelions from of my yard by mechanically digging them up by the roots (also did the same to buckhorn --- next on the schedule is broadleaf plantain) after one year where I just tore off each plant at the surface and then put a piece of rock salt on the opening of the root.
My daughter was quite put out when there was a contest in her biology class for bringing in the longest dandelion stem.
My family likes to pick a big bowl full of yellow dandelions and then make a dandelion-rhubarb pie. We make it a point to do it at least once a year as a kind of seasonal tradition.
When I was much younger and times were quite difficult for me, I just about lived on dandelion salad for the better part of a year (and only escaped getting poisoned by an herbicide because I had a habit of blanching the plants I was planning on eating by putting a rock on top of them the day before).
Might be something regional. But where I live it’s just a prevalent weed that most homeowners want to kill off. I’ve never eaten it like some of the other comments. Never heard of anyone else around here eating it either.
