White and Greenish 



ery, fluffy balls above the whorl of three compound leaves in 

 April and May, chooses low thickets and moist woods for its 

 habitat often in the same neighborhood with its larger relative. 

 Yellowish berries follow the fragrant white pompons. One must 

 burrow deep, like the rabbits, to find its round, pungent, sweet, 

 nut-like root, measuring about half an inch across, which few 

 have ever seen. 



Wild Carrot; Queen Anne's Lace; BircTs-nest 



(Daucns Carota] Carrot family 



Flowers Small, of unequal sizes (polygamous), white, rarely 

 pinkish gray, 5-parted, in a compound, flat, circular umbel, the 

 central floret often dark crimson ; the umbels very concave in 

 fruit. An involucre of narrow, pinnately cut bracts. Stem : 

 i to 3 ft. high, with stiff hairs ; from a deep, fleshy, conic root. 

 Leaves : Cut into fine, fringy divisions ; upper ones smaller 

 and less dissected. 



Preferred Habitat Waste lands, fields, roadsides. 



Flowering Season June September. 



Distribution Eastern half of United States and Canada. Europe 

 and Asia. 



A pest to farmers, a joy to the flower-lover, and a welcome 

 signal for refreshment to hosts of flies, beetles, bees, and wasps, 

 especially to the paper-nest builders, the sprangly wild carrot lifts 

 its fringy foliage and exquisite lacy blossoms above the dry soil of 

 three continents. From Europe it has come to spread its delicate 

 wheels over our summer landscape, until whole fields are whitened 

 by them east of the Mississippi. Having proved fittest in the 

 struggle for survival in the fiercer competition of plants in the 

 over-cultivated Old World, it takes its course of empire westward 

 year by year, finding most favorable conditions for colonizing in 

 our vast, uncultivated area ; and the less aggressive, native occu- 

 pants of our soil are only too readily crowded out. Would that 

 the advocates of unrestricted immigration of foreign peasants 

 studied the parallel examples among floral invaders ! 



What is the secret of the wild carrots' triumphal march ? As 

 usual, it is to be sought chiefly in the flower's scheme to attract 

 and utilize visitors. Nectar being secreted in open disks near to 

 one another, the shortest-tongued insects can lick it up from the 

 Umbelliferae with even less loss of time than from the tubular 

 florets of the Compositae. Over sixty distinct species of insects 

 may be taken on the wild carrot by any amateur, since it blooms 

 while insect life is at its height ; but, as might be expected, the 

 long-tongued and color-loving, specialized bees and butterflies 

 do not often waste time on florets so easily drained by the mob. 



222 



