Like wild parsnips, wild carrots belong to the Family
Umbelliferae - so called because its members bear their flowers in
umbels (from the Latin umbella = a sunshade). You'll all be familiar
with the flowers of cow parsley and hogweed (which are members of the same
family) so I don't need further to describe this type of inflorescence. Wild
carrots are characterised by the long, branched bracts which arise from the
bases of the primary branches of the umbel, thus forming a ruff around the
bottom of the inflorescence. The umbels are at first slightly convex but once
the flowers have been fertilized the outer branches elongate and curve inwards
so that the whole inflorescence becomes deeply concave – giving the plant
its alternative name of "bird's nest". Another remarkable feature of a wild
carrot umbel is that a single flower in its centre is very often red or purple,
in marked contrast to the pure white flowers which surround it (this feature is
usually absent in the fleshy leaved form of the plant commonly found in coastal
areas).Unlike our garden parsnips which are derived from a wild plant indigenous to Britain, our cultivated carrots (Daucus carota ssp. sativa) have been domesticated from a Mediterranean sub-species of wild carrot. They are said to have been introduced into this country in the 15th century and their cultivation was popularised in the reign of Elizabeth I by Flemish immigrants fleeing persecution by Philip II of Spain. Our native wild carrots (D. carota ssp carota) would not go down too well with your boiled beef. Their yellow roots are thin and tough and contain much more starch and a lot less sugar than do roots of the garden form.
But what wild carrots lack in palatability they make up for in medicinal virtue. Commenting on this, the 17th century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper noted that "almost in all herbs the wild are the most effectual in physic, as being more powerful in operation than the garden kinds". Culpeper recommended wild carrots for a number of ailments - from removing stitches in the side to breaking and expelling of stones in the bladder. The seeds, he claimed, were good for dropsy and colic, helped to disperse kidney stones and, taken in wine, aided conception; the leaves, when applied with honey, would cleanse ulcers. There was also an old belief that a decoction of the red flowers from the centres of the umbels was an effective treatment for the "falling sickness" (as epilepsy once was called).
Carol Klein told us that in the USA wild carrots were commonly referred to as "Queen Anne's Lace". In England, this name is normally reserved for the cow parsley which bedecks our roadsides in May but, when young, the umbel of a wild carrot does indeed resemble a piece of fine work on a lace-makers cushion - with the red flower in the middle a ruby sown in by a queen.
October 2006
Photographs © 2006 L.E. and The Magog Trust