Ontario
Weeds: Wild carrot
Table of Contents
- Name
- Other Names
- Family
- General Description
- Stems and Roots
- Leaves
- Flowers and Fruit
- Habitat
- Similar Species
- Related Links
Name: Wild carrot, Daucus carota
L.,
Other Names: carotte sauvage, Bird's-nest,
Queen Anne's-Lace, carotte
Family: Carrot Or Parsley Family (Umbelliferae)
General Description: Biennial or, occasionally,
annual and sometimes a short-lived perennial, reproducing only by
seed. Seedlings emerge during spring and early summer, with 2 long,
narrow, thin cotyledons (seed leaves); first true leaf is compound
with 3 main divisions; later leaves compound with many divisions.
Stems, leaves and root have the familiar carrot odour.
Photos and Pictures
Wild carrot. A. Seedling, top and side views.
Wild carrot. B.Base and upper part of
flowering plant.
Stems & Roots: First-year plant
usually stemless, with a deeply penetrating, tough taproot and a rosette
of stalked, very finely dissected (lacy), hairy leaves virtually identical
in appearance and smell to leaves of the cultivated carrot.
Leaves: Bases of leafstalks broad and
flat; stem produced in the second year on biennial plants, erect,
to 1m (40in.) tall, branching, grooved, rough-hairy or bristly; stem
leaves similar to basal leaves but smaller and on shorter stalks;
base of leafstalk broadened and more or less circling the stem at
each node.
Flowers & Fruit: Flowers white in
compound umbels (large umbels made up of many smaller umbels) at tips
of stem and branches; a whorl of several 3- to 5-branched bracts at
the base of each compound umbel; most flowers white or occasionally
pinkish, but the single flower arising from the centre of the compound
umbel is often dark purple; after flowering the umbel closes, forming
what is commonly called a "bird's-nest"; fruits ("seeds")
grayish to brownish with several rows of spines by which they cling
to clothing and animal fur. Flowers from June to September.
Habitat: Wild carrot occurs throughout
most of Ontario in old pastures, waste places, roadsides, meadows
and occasionally as a weed in gardens and flower borders. The cultivated
carrot was developed from Wild carrot, which has a coarse, woody,
fibrous, unpalatable taproot, by selecting strains having soft juicy
edible roots.
Similar Species: It is distinguished by its
finely divided leaves, its erect, hairy stem, its white to pinkish
compound umbels surrounded at their bases by whorls of slender 3-
to 5-branched bracts, its bird's-nest cluster of fruits and its typical
carrot odour, and a coarse, fibrous, unpalatable root.
Related Links
... on general Weed
topics
... on weed identification, order OMAFRA Publication 505: Ontario Weeds
... on weed control, order OMAFRA Publication 75: Guide To Weed Control
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