Queen Anne's bird nests

Queen Anne's Lace, going to seed.

Daucus carota, making a "birds' nest".

It's a wasteground, parking lot, roadside flower, blooming in late summer. This group is in an empty field in the Strathcona Dam campground.

The flowers are white, except for the one in the centre, which may be pink or purple; as the seed heads mature, they turn pink, then brown. The now-dried and brown nests persist through the winter.

These, and our domestic carrot, are both derived from the same species, the black carrot. Like the carrots we grow in our gardens, they are edible when young. (You really don't want to eat our cultivated carrots from a 2-year-old plant, either.) The young leaves can be added to soups or stews, whether they're from Queen Anne's Lace or our garden carrots. And I should try this:

The flower clusters can be french-fried for a carrot-flavored gourmet’s treat. Aromatic seeds good for flavoring soups and stews. (Eattheweeds)

But: If you're going to try eating Queen Anne's Lace, be careful! The extremely poisonous Poison Hemlock is a look-alike and grows in the same locations. How to tell them apart:

Both are in the Apiaceae family and have hollow stems, but poison hemlock's stem is hairless and has purple blotches. Even a very young poison hemlock will display the purple blotching. On the other hand, the stem of Queen Anne's lace doesn't have purple blotches and is hairy.
Also the umbrella shape of Queen Anne's lace is flat-topped, while the poison hemlock umbel is more rounded.
... the leaves of Queen Anne's lace, similar to the stems, will also have hairs on their undersides.
Queen Anne's lace has 3-pronged bracts appearing at both the base of the flowers and the main umbel. It's actually the only member of the Apaiceae family that has this feature. ... you'll see that poison hemlock is absent of the long bracts.
(Raven's Roots Naturalist School)

Look at the top photo, above, to see the distinctive bracts. The poison hemlock bracts are small, and lance-shaped.

Lacy nests

As summer ends, the flowers that brighten our waste spaces droop, wither, and fall into a soggy brown mass, rotting in the rain. One, Queen Anne's lace, perseveres, as beautiful in her winter outfit as she was in her summer whites.

Tall grasses and Queen Anne's lace, Tyee Spit. There are still a few white flowers left on these stalks.

As the seeds develop, the flower closes down into a cup or birds' nest shape.

Each large umbel is composed of many small umbellets. Each umbellet contains many flowers, each on their own stalk. Each flower produces two seeds, encased in a spiky pod.

The outer seed pods will split open and scatter their seeds. A few will remain all winter in the protected centre, like eggs in a bird's nest.

Queen Anne's lace is the ancestor of our common carrot, and all parts of the plant are edible.

Using first year Queen Anne’s lace plants are recommended. Roots are long, pale, woody, and are finger-thin and are used in soups, stews and in making tea. First year leaves can be chopped and tossed into a salad. Flower clusters can be ‘french-fried’ or fresh flowers can be tossed into a salad. The aromatic seed is used as a flavoring in stews and soups. (ediblewildfood . com)

There is one caveat: Queen Anne's lace looks very much like the poison hemlock, so it is essential to be able to identify each one. The simplest clue is in the flower head; Queen Anne's lace usually has one tiny purple flower in the centre of the white umbel. But since this is a biennial plant, and no flowers are produced the first year, I think I'll pass on the salad and root stews. The seeds will be safe enough, if I've seen the flower heads already.

I found a blog, Raven's Roots, with a post showing very clearly (with photos and text), how to identify poison hemlock vs. QAL. Worth bookmarking.

Also worth seeing is a photo exploration of QAL, from its earliest flowers to microscopic photos of seeds. Here.

All three photos taken on the western bank of Tyee Spit.