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From year to year, many of the flowers in my garden are the same. Most are perennials, but there are also the annual and biennial self-seeders that have become established here. So each season has a familiar look, with perhaps a few recent additions or a few losses.
Something did manage to surprise me this summer – the unusually enlarged flower head of the wild carrot (Daucus carota) pictured above. This is the mixed deep-red to white variety ‘Dara’, which I sowed a few years ago. A biennial, it has been self-seeding here ever since. The shape of this particular flower has gone very much awry, perhaps due to disease or an attack by an insect.
The flower should be a simple umbel (a shape like the frame of an upturned umbrella), like the one shown below. If you look at the structure of it, you’ll see that the ‘umbrella frame’ of stems each end in a similar structure, but in miniature. (These are known as ‘umbellules’ or ‘umbellets’ and make up a ‘compound umbel’.) The normal flower in the picture below is in the process of opening into the flatter shape of the maturing flower head.
So what has happened to produce the strange flower head here? Somehow it has produced an extra ring of smaller umbels around the central umbel. Each of these has then gained a ring of umbellules on longer stems than usual, giving the appearance of being surrounded by tiny satellites. It is as if the instruction for growing into a normal flower have become corrupted and caused repeats in the flower’s structure. Whatever the cause, I’m intrigued by this flower and I’m wondering how it will develop. What will happen when it tries to fold into the ‘nest’ shape that the seed-heads normally become? If it survives long enough, I’ll let you know what happens… 🙂
You can see more pictures of how wild carrot normally looks and develops here.
Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature 
Long live strange! It’s alway intriguing to find something in nature not following the standard practice. You wrote that “It is as if the instruction for growing into a normal flower have become corrupted and caused repeats in the flower’s structure.” That makes me wonder if in the normal genetic instructions there’s a part that stops the growth pattern, and here that part is damaged or missing, so the pattern repeats.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right Steve. It certainly seems to be trying to follow the pattern of growth in the repeats. I looked, but couldn’t find anything similar online. (Will keep trying though.)
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I find “carrots” in my flower beds and pull them out. I think of them as Queen Anne’s lace–are they different?
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This is also known as Queen Anne’s lace, but there are other plants that are also known by the name – Ammi majus (aka laceflower), and cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris). I’m going to have to move where I grow this to a wilder area because it’s getting a bit much for the flower bed now!
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I once visited a friend in southern Virginia, and her husband called them “chigger plants” because chiggers (aka biting mites) live in them and when you brush up against the flowers, disturbing the chiggers, they bite.
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Ooh – I’m glad they don’t live in mine!
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Lovely umbellate inflorescences!
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Thanks Indira! They are especially lovely when the frost decorates them too. I have wild carrot and bronze fennel in the garden because I love to photograph them. 🙂
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It seems there’s no end to the variations plants can produce. I must say — this is an oddity I’ve never seen before, and it will be interesting to watch it develop. The color’s intriguing, too. I’ve only seen pure white examples; we call it Queen Anne’s lace, and it’s introduced here. On the other hand, we do have a native species, Daucus pusillus, and after looking at the photos, it’s entirely possible that I’ve confused it with D. carota, since both are white but the umbel of D. pusillus is a little smaller. It’s in my area, too. I’ll have to look for it!
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It is normally white, but would often have a few red flowers in the centre. I suspect that the breeding of ‘Dara’ has used that same deep red gene. Some of the flowers come up all deep red, others are a soft pink and some are the original white – they look lovely together as a mix. (It’s often called Queen Anne’s lace here too.)
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How peculiar for it to do that. I have seen lots of wild wild carrot around here, none with the extra umbrella satellitey bits. I have noticed a pinky tinge to some of them that didn’t used to be. Climate change maybe?
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I don’t know Jill. Maybe there’s a natural variance that the breeders of ‘Dara’ took advantage of. If only pinkish flowers were allowed to cross with each other, maybe they’d eventually turn much pinker? Makes me wonder if theose in my garden will gradually become more white…
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This is proof of how helpful close observation and attention to detail are. I have seen this (or a related) plant, but I don’t think it would have struck me as being unusual. I would likely have considered it a natural variant.
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It has been growing here for a few years now, so I’ve got used to how they usually are. I did wonder if this was something that wild carrots did from time to time, but could find no mention or other photos of it. Even so, I’ll keep a lookout in case someone else mentions this because it would be interesting to know why it happened.
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It would be interesting to know what happened, and where (eg. on a DNA level, or elsewhere).
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