Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CXLVIII · Topic 22: Weeds and wayside plants
148. Queen Anne's lace, or wild carrot
Goal: Your child studies how the wild carrot's tiny flowers make one lacy pattern, estimates how many seeds one plant makes, and learns to keep away from its dangerous look-alikes.
You'll need
- Nature notebook, pencil and colored pencils
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- Garden gloves
- A field guide or reliable plant app
What's in the book
A Teacher's Story about Queen Anne's lace and the lesson: Leading thought, Method and eleven questions, followed by a passage from Richard Jefferies and Comstock's essay on weeds.
The lesson, step by step
Safety first
Wild carrot has relatives that look a lot like it and are deadly poisonous (poison hemlock and water hemlock), and another (wild parsnip) whose juice burns skin in sunlight. Only handle a plant after an adult is sure it is Queen Anne's lace: it has a hairy stem, lacy flat-topped clusters, often one dark red floret in the middle, and seed-heads that curl up like a bird's nest. Wear gloves, never taste any part, and wash hands when you come in.
When and where
Comstock says it blooms very late, often into November, along country roadsides, pastures and meadows, and its dry seed-clusters can be studied all winter.
The leading thought
Queen Anne's lace is a weed which came to us from Europe and flourishes better here than on its native soil. It has beautiful blossoms set in clusters, and it matures many seeds which it manages to plant successfully.
The pattern
Look at a wild carrot plant; how are its blossoms arranged? Take a flower-cluster, what is its shape? How many small flower-clusters make the large one?
Look from above: little round clusters fit together into one big lace doily.
The dark floret
Can you find a cluster with an almost black or very dark red floret at its center?
Do you think it makes the flowers of the Queen Anne's lace prettier to have this dark red floret at the center?
Seeds
What is the general shape of the seed-cluster of the wild carrot? Have you ever found such a cluster broken off and blowing across the snow?
Take one seed-cluster and count the number of seeds within it. How many seed-clusters do you find on a single plant? How many seeds do you, therefore, think a single plant produces?
Count the seeds in one small part of the cluster and multiply, rather than counting every one.
Nature notebook
Draw the big flat cluster from above, then one little cluster enlarged. Write your seed estimate with the arithmetic beside it.
Afterwards
Look for birds feeding on the seed-clusters in winter, as Comstock asks.
Answers to the book's problems
To estimate: (seeds in one cluster) × (clusters on the plant). For example, about 500 seeds in a cluster × 20 clusters = about 10,000 seeds; your own count will differ.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.