Lesson CXLVIII

Queen Anne’s Lace, or Wild Carrot

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.

Method—The object of this lesson should be to show the pupils how this weed survives the winter and how it is able to grow where it is not wanted, maintaining itself successfully, despite man’s enmity. The weed is very common along most country roadsides, and in many pastures and meadows. It blossoms very late in the autumn, and is available for lessons often as late as November. Its seed-clusters may be used for a lesson at almost any time during the winter.

Observations—1. 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? How are these arranged to make the large cluster symmetrical?

2. Take one of the little flower-clusters from near the center, and one from the outside, of the large cluster; how many little flowers, or florets make up the smaller cluster? Look at one of the florets through a lens; can you see the cup-shaped calyx? How many petals has it? Can you see its five anthers and its two white pistils?

3. Take one of the outer florets of the outside cluster; are all its flowers the same shape? How do they differ? Where are the florets with the large petals placed in the big flower-cluster? How does this help to make “the pattern?”

4. Do the outside or the central flowers of the large clusters open first? Can you find a cluster with an almost black or very dark red floret at its center? Is this dark flower a part of one of the little clusters or does it stand alone, its stem reaching directly to the main stalk? Do you think it makes the flowers of the Queen Anne’s lace prettier to have this dark red floret at the center?

5. Take a flower-cluster with the flowers not yet open. Can you see the threadlike green bracts that close up around each bud? Can you see finely divided, threadlike bracts that stand out around the whole cluster? What position do these bracts assume when the flowers are open? What do they do after the flowers fade and the seeds are being matured?

6. 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? Do you think this is one way the seed is planted?

7. Examine a single seed of the wild carrot with a lens. Is it round or oblong? Thin or flat? Is it ridged or grooved? Has it any hooks or spines by which it might cling to the clothing of passers-by, or to the hair or fleece of animals, and thus be scattered more widely? Does the seed cling to its stem or break away readily when it is touched?

8. 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?

9. What should you consider the best means of destroying this prolific weed?

10. What do you think is the reason that the wild carrot remains untouched, so that it grows vigorously and matures its seeds in lanes and pastures where cattle graze?

11. Have you noticed any birds feeding on the seeds of the wild carrot?

I do not want change: I want the same old and loved things, the same wild flowers, the same trees and soft ash-green; the turtle-doves, the blackbirds, the coloured yellow-hammer sing, sing, singing so long as there is light to cast a shadow on the dial, for such is the measure of his song, and I want them in the same place. Let me find them morning after morning, the starry-white petals radiating, striving upwards to their ideal. Let me see the idle shadows resting on the white dust; let me hear the humble-bees, and stay to look down on the rich dandelion disc. Let me see the very thistles opening their great crowns—I should miss the thistles; the reed-grasses hiding the moor-hen; the bryony bine, at first crudely ambitious and lifted by force of youthful sap straight above the hedgerow to sink of its own weight presently and progress with crafty tendrils; swifts shot through the air with outstretched wings like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from the clouds; the chaffinch with a feather in her bill; all the living staircase of the spring, step by step, upwards to the great gallery of the summer—let me watch the same succession year by year. —“The Pageant of Summer,” by Richard Jefferies.