In my garden there is usually only one type of dandelion, the red seeded dandelion T. erythrospermum . Taraxacum officinale the common dandelion I don't see in my garden, or it may be there and I just haven't noticed it? But T. erythrospermum the red seeded dandelion is always there.
T. erythrospermum is the leaf on the left. And as far as I can tell T. erythrospermum is hardly mentioned on British ident' websites and few books, but mentioned a lot on North American ident' sites, yet on most American sites it says it is a European import? So I must confess I'm a little confused.
The dandelion leaves are at the base in a rosette, then from the centre a long stalk erupts and on top a compound yellow flower unfolds. Once the flower head has been visited by bees, beetles and hover flies and the seeds at the base of the flower are fertilized, the pappus develops from the calyx, this is the 'clock' head and each seed has its own pappus to float away on the wind. The seeds themselves are called achene.
The dandelion leaves are at the base in a rosette, then from the centre a long stalk erupts and on top a compound yellow flower unfolds. Once the flower head has been visited by bees, beetles and hover flies and the seeds at the base of the flower are fertilized, the pappus develops from the calyx, this is the 'clock' head and each seed has its own pappus to float away on the wind. The seeds themselves are called achene.
You can see quite clearly the very distinct triangular lobes on the plant leaves, and the pink/red stem, it is not globulose or indistinct lobes like the common dandelion. Hence my dandelion matches the picture on the left. So I can say with confidence this is the red seeded dandelion.
The other way I could tell, would be to look at the seeds, but it was to early for them. When you see the spherical puff of seeds (the 'clock' as kids call them) common dandelions have olive green seeds at the base of each fluffy parachute (pappus), and the red seeded....obviously has red seeds.
The clock stems are also different colours, red on the red seeded, green on the common.
Rather frustrated by not being able to find a common dandelion, I set off on a route march up and down my street, I found hundreds....Nearly every single one a red seeded, but I did eventually find a common one, but it didn't have a clock on it. But at least I got a good picture of the red seeds of the T. erythrosperum, and the globular leaves of a T. officinale (Minnesota wildflowers 2020).
Above is a stock photo of the two different fruiting heads, below are my pics'.
T. officinale showing globular leaves, sadly the clock stem was there but had no seeds left on it. So no Olive green seeds to show you. Notice the green clock stem.
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