Ontario Weeds: Wild carrot

Table of Contents

1. Name
2. Other Names
3. Family
4. General Description
   • Photos and Pictures
5. Stems and Roots
6. Leaves
7. Flowers and Fruit
8. Habitat
9. Similar Species
10. 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.

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Photos and Pictures

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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.

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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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