QUEEN ANNE'S LACE IS BLOOMING

QUEEN ANNE'S LACE  (WILD CARROT)...

...UNFOLDING FLOWERS RESEBLE A BIRD'S NEST, THUS ANOTHER COMMON NAME

...

COMPOUND UMBEL OF FLOWERS

COMPOUND PINNATE LEAF, FINELY DISSECTED LEAFLETS

Saturday, 9:00 AM. 68 degrees F at the ferry dock, 66 on the back porch. Wind SW, mostly calm with occasional light to moderate gusts.  The sky is partly clouded with high, wispy white clouds.  The humidity is 80%, the barometer more or less steady today, at 29.94" of mercury.  The forecast calls for a high around 80 today, then much cooler tomorrow, but warming to +or- 75 with mostly clear skies, and chances of rain next Tuesday and Thursday.  Pretty nice summer weather ahead.

   Queen Anne's lace, the perennial plant also known as wild carrot, Daucus carrota, in the Parsley Family (Umbelliferae) is a common roadside and field plant found virtually throughout North America. Native to Europe, it is considered by the USDA to be a noxious weed.  It is a rather attractive plant in flower, and a selection, subspecies sativa, that was made from it thousands of years ago by some unnamed paleolithic gardener,  became the edible carrot.  

   The wild carrot root is edible when young but rapidly becomes too woody to eat.  Do not eat any part of the wild carrot unless you are absolutely sure of its identification, since many members of the Parsley Family are poisonous, and some extremely deadly.

   In England the plant is also called bird's nest, since the unfolding umbels resemble a bird's nest, before the flowers bloom.
   Wild carrot is important in herbal medicine as a diuretic and  for the treatment of gout. I have been tempted to try it as a gout remedy, but my own gout problem has moderated greatly of late so I will not experiment.
   According to my records, which aren't too accurate for D. carrota, but probably close enough, it usually begins blooming in early August, so is early this year (go figure).