Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) is an introduced species.
During the later part of the summer, it becomes the dominant plant in many pastures. This pasture has been overrun with them.
We call it Queen Anne’s lace, but it’s actually better known by a different name.
All you have to do is pick a flower and smell the stem.
It smells exactly like a carrot.
Queen Anne’s lace, as strange as this might sound, is to the domestic carrot what a wolf is to a dog.
Domestic carrots are just a cultivar of this species that produces a large tasty taproot.
North Americans always call this species Queen Anne’s lace.
The name derives from Queen Anne (Anne of Denmark, James I’s wife). She supposedly pricked her finger while making lace, which is represented by the red dot in the middle of this “lacy” flower.
You can actually eat the root too! You have to eat them when they’re young though. Preferably in their first year, before they flower.
And don’t mix it up with hogweed! =O
I’ve found some decent-sized taproots on Queen Anne’s lace, but it never crossed my mind that you could eat them.
I thought carrots were like bananas, where the wild ones aren’t tasty at all.
They’re much more fibrous, not as tasty and contain relatively little carotene. They are to the carrot what those wild onions (really leeks) are to a Vidalia. Of the many wild foods I’ve eaten, wild carrot is one of my least favorite–but I eat cultivated carrots almost every day. On the other hand, those feral Day Lilies growing in the culvert produce a dandy little root vegetable.
Yep.. but you just have to make sure you don’t confuse them with similar species which can be poisonous.They taste just like they smell… carrot. =]
We have a number of native and introduced umbelliferae, some poisonous like the Water Hemlock, others scrumptious like Sweet Cicely.
Yes, and those umbelliferae that are toxic are deadly, & some are easily confused with edible types (lovely, edible angelica vs. deadly poisonous hemlock, for instance).
BTW, daylily buds are great, too, lightly sauteed or steamed like green beans.
Do carrots produce flowers, if they’re left in the ground long enough?
Yes, they’ll flower, and the flowers look very much like the wild ones.
Here too! However, despite all the rain earlier on, thanks to a southwards shift of the jet stream over England, it was eventually a lovely summer as far as wild vegetation was concerned. The normally quite dry chiltern (chalk) hills of this area have been full of colour like a beautiful garden and this was just one of several umbellifer species, none too dominant.
They are native to your country.
They were introduced here.
Around here the Queen Anne’s Lace does much better than its cultivated relative–I suspect primarily because the root is small. Cultivated carrots, parsley, parsnip, etc., are very vulnerable to various local insect pests such as carrot rust flies (Psila rosae) that attacks the roots.
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