PlantFiles: Wild Carrot, Queen Anne's Lace
Daucus carota

My mother loves the flower and even presses them we allow several to grow and often they can grow 4-5 feet here. I find that beneficial insects love it but it is considered invasive so check if there are restrictions to growing it in your area. As far as the burrs... some may be mistaking hemlock or water hemlock for Queen Anne's Lace which not only has tenacious burrs but is also poisonous. Queen Anne's Lace is edible and has a flavor similar to carrot but don't try it unless you are 100% sure of its identification. the seed head of Queen Anne's Lace also forms a cup looking somewhat like a bird's nest whereas the hemlock is more open.

I am confused about the reports of burrs. I have this wildflower in my garden and I have never encountered burrs on the plant.

My Queenies come back every year with varying success. One season I had a plant by the mail box as tall as I am.
They make beautiful cut arrangements and are long lasting when cut.

Legend has it that Queen Anne pricked herself while making lace. Her blood droplets account for the dark purple petals at the center of each bloom. Look closely and you will see them.

They will not survive transplanting so if you have them sprouting where they are unwelcome just pull them up.

very nice plant to grow.. you never even have to touch it and it will bloom nicely in cracks between your perannuals. if you don't like it somewhere and have nice garden soil its a lot easier to pull it up in its first year when it first sprouts... its also very easy to idenifie .. unless its growing your carrots. it also has a nice fragrance..

Although it's obviously a weed, it's so ubiquitous that minor cultivation is no longer significant. A specimen or two for cut flowers can be likened to a neighbor with dandelions in their lawn, while there are highways and ballfields full of yellow blossoms and fluffy white puffballs. (Believe it or not, those dandelions are better for our health than rivers and streams [and therefore somebody's drinking water] full of broad-leaf herbicides.)

Although many invasives respond to management, some are beyond the point of no return. (Can you stop the wind or the birds from spreading seeds?) They're effectively part of the ecosystem now. Pandora's box is open. Ya can't put them back. What you can do is plant natives to create habitat for wildlife, and prevent new nonnative invasives from getting loose. :-)

Ahem, that said, Queen Anne's Lace is a beautiful biennial which is easily dead-headed before ripened. It is a host species to the Black Swallowtail butterfly, and perhaps one of the reasons that's one of the few common large butterflies left.

Queen Anne's Lace is truly Wild Carrot: same genus & species. Therefore, they can be harvested and cleaned for wilderness survival, provided that they are growing far from highways and industrial areas. They thrive in ecotone/edge habitats as well as shortgrass and rocky areas, and spread rapidly in disturbances. They do not thrive in forests or tallgrass prairies where there is too much shade.

They are extremely hardy, tolerating droughts, freezes, and herbivory. Perhaps some of these traits should be bred back into our food crop carrots. ;-)

Whatever merits this plant may have, they don't compensate for the seeds that cling to everything. They are really hard to remove from hair or clothing. Also, this plant spreads and grows thickly.

An introduced pest to the US and considered a noxious weed in many states-meaning it is illegal to ship plants or seed of this pest into that state. The other states have just given up. Classified as a Biennial, it is an ANNUAL here in western Oregon, it is resistant to all pre-emergent herbicides I have tried-meaning NOTHING stops it from germinating, and it blooms and seeds in one season. Mowing doesn't control it except in a turf situation, it just reblooms at a lower height and seeds anyway. Plants form a deep taproot and are very hard to pull or hoe out. Seeds stick to anything and everything so are easily spread, seed heads are very flammable so are a fire hazard here in the west where we get no summer rain. The honey produced from this pest is unfit for human consumption and causes losses in the bee industry. Yes it is pretty, there are many pink forms of it here infesting my fields, but it is far more trouble than it is worth looking at..

this grew as a weed/wildflower where I grew up. I didn't really consiter it invasive as it seemed to go away if you mowed it too much (probably from cutting the flowers before they could go to seed).

You can also make a yellow dye from them.

On Minnesota DNR invasive list. From the website...
Ecological Threat:
It invades disturbed dry prairies, abandoned fields, waste places, and road sides. It is a threat to recovering grasslands and can be persistent on clay soils.
A native of Europe and Asia it now occurs throughout the U.S.
It tends to decline as native grasses and herbaceous plants become established.
Queen Ann's lace is on the MDA Secondary noxious weeds list in Minnesota.

The one I have growing all over has the barbs that take forever to get out of my dogs coat... on the other hand... the butterflies and cats love it.

I usually pick all I can and throw it away. There is plenty left between the birds and what I can't get to for the butterflies and cats.

Years ago I found QAL growing in a small area near our home. Apparently it was a gift from a bird. I gathered the seeds and tossed them about. The following year I had even more of them,
and the next year as well. I am currently attempting to get it to spread down a ditch so as to fight the weeds.

To keep it under control where I do not wish it to grow, I simply mow over it.

The fun thing about QAL is to gather a bouquet of it in the summer, then place the cuttings into a glass of food coloring. The blooms will absorb and display the color. Very fun!

KM

Wild Carrot, Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota)

The tiny flowers are in tight umbels, white or occasionally tinged with pink. The central floret is purple in the mature umbel. The umbel is first concave, then flat and finally convex. As it fades, it curls into a tight bird nest shape. Three pronged bracts are found below the flower heads. Basal leaves are formed the first year, flower stalks the second year (biennial). A branching plant with a large tap-root and finely divided leaves, and is an ancestor of the cultivated carrot.

Are we talking about the same plant when we talk about Queen Anne's Lace? It sounds to me like some of us are referring to what we call Beggar's Lice or Beggar's ticks here in Texas. This twiggy "noxious weed" grows profusely by the roadsides, etc. and makes seeds that stick to everything like lice. The flower head of this plant is barely 2 inches in diameter. Then some of us are talking about that beautiful 6-inch flowerhead that appears in bouquets and has the Latin name Daucus carota. This flowerhead has a large, hollow stem several feet long. I want to grow Daucus carota/Queen Anne's Lace in my garden, and I am looking for seeds, but I sure don't need beggar's lice seeds. It would be good to know how to ask for one, but not the other.

Noxious weed in more than 35 states. Those who prefer to refer to this plant as a wildflower may not know the difference between a plant that is native that belongs on the continent of North America and one that is introduced that has naturalized and displaced actual native wildflowers. A nice alternative which is exceedingly more beautiful and stately would be Heracleum lanatum.

BEWARE: DO NOT PLANT THIS UNLESS YOU CAN KEEP THIS UNDER CONTROL!

Although the flowers are pretty this weed has become my worst nightmare. After buying my first house last summer in TX, I was incredibly excited about my first spring and all that I would do in the yard and putting in a new vegetable garden. Unfortunately I spent almost all of March and April pulling this monster from my yard!

Yes, it is a biennial, which is probably why I didn't notice much of it last summer, but OMG nothing will get rid of this stuff except pulling or using RoundUp on it, which of course is not the best thing to do for lawns. So, everyday I would get my little grocery bag and go sit in the yard pulling large clumps of it out. I bet I have filled over 30 bags in the past 2 months and I'm no where near finished! The trick is to gather it up like a pony tail and pull it up.

It will also inhibit your grass from growing in those areas because it's like an umbrella that pushes everything out of its way and blocks the light. I have huge bare patches in the yard now from where it was pulled. My only saving grace is that I have St. Augustine and it will fill in. What a mess!

I adore Queen Anne's Lace - it is definitely one of my favorite wildflowers. I let several fields on my property go ungroomed for wildlife, & am able to gather armloads of this airy flower for bouquets for most of the summer. And as someone else stated, it is an attractor of beneficial insects.

Queen Anne's Lace is in the Umbelliferae plant family (carrot family) and is a food source for beneficial insects. Keep Queen Anne's Lace in your garden, it will attract beneficial insects. The beneficial's will gobble up all the pesky insects and do the work for you! Plants in the Umbelliferae family are known to attract those helpful insects. Queen Anne's Lace is a gardener's friend.

It produces a bazillion seeds that cling to everything and are difficult to remove from my socks! DW likes them in flower arrangements. It is a noxious weed to me!

Although it spreads like wildfire, I enjoy Queen Anne's Lace everywhere I see it. I've never seen it so thick that it crowds out other plants, instead, it's a lovely addition to a wildflower meadow and along roadsides.

It does set an amazing number of seeds, but if you want to control it, simply snip off the blossoms after they fade, but before the seed matures.

A mature seed head will close up upon itself and turn a brownish color. This gives it one of it's other common name's, Bird's Nest Plant.

I wish I could grow Queen Anne's Lace in Hawaii. When I lived in SC I would go and collect them from the sides of the road to use in arrangements with other flowers. I planted some in my yard, but it never did much.

One of the lovelies of the wild flowers.

If anyone considers them invasive they don't know what invasive really is......

Last year one grew in my greenhouse. It got started in the raised bed where I had some ginger root from the grocery store planted.I let it grow. I thought it was Ginger Root. I thought the store people had sold me a type of Ginger Root that didn't look like the pictures in the plant books. Nine feet tall and six feet wide. WHAT A PRETTY PLANT!!!
Now they are 6 inches tall from the cracks in the sidewalk to roof height in good soil. About 50 of them. Very pretty, v
ery invasive.
Sedro Woolley, Washington

I find Queen Anne,s lace to be a lovely flower and also very reliable.
No need to baby this one. It does set seed profusely. If you don't want much of it, just remove the seedheads before they mature but leave some for next year. It is a biennial

I live in Northern Michigan and Queen Anne's Lace is in abundance. It can be used as a home remedy in tea or as
a poltice or eaten in salads. It can be toxic in large qunities. Lots of sites world wide. Go to askjeeves.com and type in daucus carota in search box. It also has hallucinogenic properties in the seeds

Queen Anne's Lace is a lovely wildflower to which I have donated 20 square feet in my garden. I make bouquets of daisys, lillies, roses, Iris, glads, and more thru the summer and they are all more beautiful with lots of Queen Anne's Lace to set them off. I have never lost a plant to this lovely flower.

many in those 35 states prefer to call it a wildflower

Considered a noxious weed in at least 35 states.