NEWS
A Conversation about Queens Lace and Carrots
Lately there are constellations of white scattered across meadows and fields, and encroaching on the neatly mowed lawns of suburbia. They are the Daucus carota, or Queen's Anne Lace flowers. It's a familiar wildflower to anyone who ever spent time outdoors in late summer. As usual, while admiring them, I started to wonder about some things. Why the plant is called Queen Anne's Lace, and how come it's also called wild carrot. Easy answer to the wild carrot name... Linnaeus named it and apparently the domestic carrot (Dausus sativus) was already in use as a vegetable.
As to nicknames: “Queen Anne's Lace” has two wildly different accredited sources. The consensus is that Queen Anne II of England (1665-1714) is the queen of the legends. She is said to have pricked her finger while tatting a lace doily, and the droplet of blood landed in the center. This is compared to the single purple floret at the center of an otherwise all-white flower. Oh, and you know that one colored floret at the middle of the umbel? The experts are still debating its use.
A less charming attribution claims that Queen Anne neglected personal hygiene and had hairy legs(gossip never changes), therefore the hairs on the stems and underpinnings of the florets. There is a collection of other legends about Queen Anne I, and some about Saint Anne, patron saint of lacemakers. The plant was introduced to North America as a medicinal plant.
What about the other nicknames of “birds nest” and “Bees nest” as well as “Devil's Plague?” The nest descriptions refer to the basket shape the flower assumes when the seeds begin to develop, and the plague reference is because a rampant growth of queen's lace makes a field unusable from the difficulty of removing its roots.
Queen's lace is a biennial. This means the life cycle from seed to seed takes two seasons. Like many biennials, the plant is humble and unassuming in year one. It's a rosette of pretty fern-like leaves that don't produce a flower. That's because they're busy producing a strong tap root (you know, a carrot). It's tempting to leave it in place because it's a pretty companion to your other plants. If you leave it, it will stay green over the winter and leap into a frantic growth spurt in the spring. It will become a two- to four-foot plant that looks like a feathery bouquet of doilies. It will also be a brute to remove, and in its final stages looks pretty disheveled.
The story of queen's lace is full of dark episodes. It's a pretty wildflower, but it contributes little as a pollinator. It's similar in appearance to a couple of very dangerous plants that cause dermatitis, and in fact it can be caustic to some very sensitive people. Be sure you know the difference before handling the plant. The dried stems can be used in floral arrangements but moving the seed heads can start a whole new population, and even though they are pretty, they will overtake a garden very quickly and crowd other plants out. The ultimate good news is that a subspecies of this pretty wildflower is the familiar carrot from the grocer's produce aisle. The carrot's domestication was apparently a development from early medicinal use of the wild carrot, to finding some that were edible. The history of the domestic carrot is full of controversy, too. You can learn more at:
https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org › PlantFinder