Queen Anne’s lace is many things to many people — roadside wildflower, noxious introduced weed, wild edible, medicinal herb, delightful cut flower. In Missouri, it blooms May through October.
Queen Anne's lace is a biennial wildflower with branching stems, with stiff hairs. The root is a stout taproot, much like a small carrot. As a biennial, it forms a rosette of basal leaves during the first year and overwinters. The flower stalk develops during the second growing season, after which the plant dies.
The leaves are alternate on the stem, twice-pinnately compound with linear (narrow grasslike or straplike) leaflets.
The flowers are minute, 5-petaled, white or rarely pinkish white, and arranged in large compound umbels (umbrella-shaped clusters, with small umbrellas forming at the tip of each spoke of the main umbrella). The central floret of the entire cluster is usually purple.
Blooms May–October.
After blooming, the umbel withers and contracts, forming a bowl into which the seeds fall. The seeds are oblong and spiny.
- Because some close relatives look very similar and are extremely toxic, correct identification is critical for anyone wishing to eat “wild edibles.” If you are inexperienced with plant identification, it is best to consider all wild members of the carrot family as potentially fatally toxic.
Similar species: Missouri has several species in the carrot/parsley family with divided leaves and umbrella-shaped clusters of whitish flowers.
Two lookalikes you should especially be aware of are poison hemlock and common water hemlock, which are both fatally poisonous if ingested. Because they are extremely toxic, while other close relatives are considered edible, correct identification is critical for anyone wishing to eat wild edibles.
- The stems of these toxic hemlocks are usually (poison hemlock) or often (water hemlock) spotted, streaked, or mottled with purple and are smooth (hairless), often with a whitish waxy coating.
- Both of the the toxic hemlocks are robust plants with stalks to 6 feet or more, while Queen Anne's lace only grows to about 2 feet.
- Poison hemlock has very finely dissected 2-, 3-, or 4- times compound leaves that look like fern fronds. Water hemlock has doubly-compound leaves with the leaflets rather large, toothed, and sometimes lobed at the base. Both hemlocks contrast with the linear, narrow leaflets of Queen Anne's lace.
- Both of the toxic hemlocks do not have the purple central floret that Queen Anne's lace has.
Height: to 5 feet.
Statewide, though apparently uncommon in the Bootheel lowlands. Native of Eurasia.
Habitat and Conservation
Occurs in fields, pastures, banks of streams and rivers, tops of bluffs, glades, fencerows, roadsides, railroads, waste places, and open, disturbed areas.
Introduced from Eurasia, this species has two subspecies: wild carrot (ssp. carota), which we consider a wildflower, and cultivated carrot (ssp. sativus), familiar from the grocery store.
Status
Nonnative wildflower, introduced from Eurasia. Considered invasive in several US states.
Human Connections
To many, this is a noxious weed that is difficult to control. Others use the fresh or dried flower stalks in floral arrangements.
Cultivated carrot was developed long ago from this wild original. The root of the wild form is edible when young but soon becomes woody and unpleasant.
The plant creates many chemicals ranging from toxic to medicinal to skin-irritating.
The carrot-parsley family (Apiaceae; pronounced ay-pee-ay-cee-ee) is incredibly important for human food, including many herbs, spices, and vegetables: cilantro/coriander, cumin, caraway, anise, chervil, dill, fennel, parsley, celery, carrot, parsnip, asafoetida, and many more.
The carrot-parsley family is also infamous for its toxic species, such as poison hemlock, common water hemlock, giant hogweed, and several more.
An older name for the family was Umbelliferae (um-bell-IFF-er-ee), derived from the term for the umbrella-like form of the flower clusters (umbel). This and some other plant family names, taken from a descriptive word, were replaced by names based on the name of a genus in the family; in this case, it's the genus Apium (the genus that celery is in). The carrot-parsley family is now called the Apiaceae, but you might sometimes hear a member of the family called an "umbellifer."
Ecosystem Connections
A myth says the purplish flower at the center is a drop of blood shed when "Queen Anne" pricked herself while making the "lace." In reality, that small flower helps attract insect pollinators.
This nonnative plant competes against our native species. The seeds can stay viable for up to five years.
The caterpillars of black swallowtail butterflies are adapted to eat the foliage of plants in the carrot-parsley family and will eat this species.
Ebony bugs (family Thyreocoridae) are tiny, shiny, black, beetle-like bugs that are almost always seen on flower clusters and immature seeds of members of the carrot-parsley family. Look for dozens of them feeding on the closed-up heads of spent Queen-Anne's lace flowers.
