Gardeners beware – it looks as if the long, cold winter followed by the recent warm spell has prompted a dandelion explosion.
As these pictures from the Highlands show, the bright yellow flowers are now suddenly blooming in their thousands.
One expert believes they are particularly eye-catching this year because so many flowered at the same time.
Dominic Price, director of The Species Recovery Trust, said: ‘Because we had that very cold snap followed by that heat I think there’s some truth in the idea that they have all come out very quickly.
‘In a normal spring we’d get a gradual increase of temperature and they would come through bit by bit, but I think the weather this year certainly sped it up.
‘They have all come through in huge quantities in a very short period of time.
‘In truth, I also think you just forget how amazing they look. It’s like autumn colour – you can be struck by it every year and strong seasonality is one of the lovely things about this country.
‘You do get this incredible change of flowering and because dandelion is one of the first to flower people really notice it, because they’ve had months and months of nothing.
‘They’re quite a lover of high nutrient levels. They often do quite well on road verges because there’s nitrogen from the car fumes.
‘They like heat and sunshine and that’s what triggers the flowering.’