There is a white flower whose large target-like blossoms are
liberally lacing the countryside in all directions. Few weedy
flowers are as well known in the Northern Hemisphere as the Queen
Anne’s lace. On the one hand their intricate blossoms are beauty
to behold, while on the other they are nothing more than
pernicious invasive weeds that do not belong in gardens or
cultivated fields.
Its presence, dating back thousands of years, is reflected in
its genus name of Daucus, which is what it was called in
ancient Greece. You are correct if you think that its leaves
resemble those of the carrots growing in your garden. Its
species name is Carota (ca-ROE-ta), the old generic name
for carrot. Many people call it the wild carrot, an accurate
title in that it was the wild progenitor of our garden carrots of
today.
Some trace its arrival in America to easterners who brought
the plants from Europe to be introduced into their Victorian
gardens. Believe me, they have found their way into our garden
all by themselves – many of them! One flower gardener, who made
the terrible mistake of adding a few to her garden as tall accent
plants, eventually claimed that they were far worse than house
guests who overstay their welcome. In most instances house
guests will eventually leave but, unlike the Queen Anne’s lace,
they don’t leave their children behind.
As an old saying goes, "Give it an inch and it will take
a mile." It is a prodigious seed producer, grows in the
poorest of soil, and requires no attention whatsoever. Then, as
though doubling its chances of survival, it is a biennial. In
examining the dry weedy slope east of our house I find hundreds
of tiny first-year carrot-like plants, already building up
strength in their roots for producing tall, flowering,
seed-producing Queen Anne’s lace plants next summer. My firm
advice is to not allow this plant to add a touch of elegance to
your garden!
The plant is a member of the parsley family, also referred to
by botanists as the umbelliferae family, pronounced
"um-bel-LIF-er-ee." Its lacy-white umbrella-shaped
flower-heads are called umbels. Examine one flower and you will
see that the total umbel is comprised of many smaller umbels.
The plant I dissected, particle by particle, contained 56
small umbels. One of those umbels in turn was composed of 42
tiny individual flowers. Undoubtedly you can find a Queen Anne’s
lace with at least 2,352 or more very small individual flowers.
The plant’s fern-like leaves are very finely divided with
lateral leaflets, such as on an ash leaf, and said to be pinnate.
Others are twice-divided and are bipinnate (BY-pin-nate), while
those larger leaves at the bottom of the plant are very feathery
and are usually divided three times, being tripinnate
(TRY-pin-nate).
Next, in order to thoroughly examine a plant, dig up its
entire root, wash it off and crush it to obtain its rather
distinctive carrot-like odor. Don’t be led into thinking that
the roots are good-tasting – in fact you will find them to be
quite bitter. A strong word of caution must be added at this
point. Beware of look-alikes, especially the poisonous,
rash-producing, wild parsnip whose umbel-shaped flowers are
yellowish and lack the small purple central florets most Queen
Anne’s lace flowers have.
There are botanists who believe that the small, sterile,
purplish, central florets found on many of the intricate compound
inflorescences of Queen Anne’s lace plants act as decoy flowers
whose design in nature is to attract insects which,
inadvertently, will become the important pollinators. Strangely
many insects will automatically be lured to the dark-colored
flower and it is there that we have seen crab or flower spiders
patiently waiting, being ambush spiders, for their next meal to
arrive.
If the crab spiders have come recently from yellow flowers,
such as the common St.Johnswort, they will be light yellow and
adorned with faint pink markings. Give them a few days on the
white lacy flowers and gradually they will turn white, also with
pink markings, to match perfectly the white "umbrellas"
with their purple centers, near to where they are waiting for
their next victims’ arrival.
It was Queen Anne of Denmark (1577-1619), daughter of King
Frederick II of Denmark and Norway, after whom this widespread
flower was named. Eventually she became Queen consort of King
James I of England. History tells us that there was much
inbreeding among the European royalty, a higher-than-normal
degree of consanguinity, which brought about its share of
hemophiliacs, characterized by excessive bleeding.
The storytellers inform us that Queen Anne pricked her finger
with a needle while making lace and bled to death and that the
lovely Queen Anne’s lace flower came into existence as a reminder
of how Queen Anne met her fate.
Here is a plant that can be a poet’s delight, an inspiration
for the artist, an absolute mecca of a multitude of learning
possibilities for good teachers and their students, the ideal
source for studying and photographing insects, or an ecologically
invasive pest to gardeners and farmers. The choice is yours!
Let’s face it, even though the vast majority of these abundant
and attractive weeds are "alien invaders" so were many
of our cherished ancestors!
This delicate Queen Anne's lace shows the reddish purple center spot which lures flying insects.
A crab spider waits patiently on a Queen Anne's lace blossom for its insect meal to arrive.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 08/28/2004.
© Copyright 2004 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
