“And then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.” Beatrix Potter
Along the roadsides and in the fields Queen Anne’s lace, Daucus carota, is blooming, a quintessential summer plant. Also called the wild carrot or bird’s nest flower, Queen Anne’s lace, a biennial native to Afghanistan is tolerant of drought and poor soil. In its first year the plant forms a rosette of basal leaves and a slender taproot, the carrot. The following year, a hollow stem topped by an umbel consisting of white florets with one dark, sterile bloom in the center. The flower was named for Queen Anne (stories vary as to which one) who enjoyed tatting lace and the central dark flower represents a drop of blood from her pricked finger. The wild carrot was brought to North America by the colonists as a medicinal plant used for digestive disorders and as a morning after contraceptive. A recently developed annual ‘Dara’ has wine colored umbels. I planted starts last year and self-sown volunteers are blooming now.
The garden carrot, D. carota subsp. sativus, was bred during the tenth century in Persia and grown mostly for the leaves and seeds. These carrots usually have yellow or purple roots. In the seventeenth century the orange carrot was bred in the Netherlands, some believe to honor the House of Orange and Dutch independence.
The flattened dome flower, or umbel, lends its name to a family of plants, the Umbelliferae (now renamed Apiaceae). Other traits of the family include aromatic foliage, hollow stems, and a taproot. I always wondered about the origins of the term “umbel”. Its root is the Latin “umbra” meaning shade or shadow. The words “umbrella” and “umbrage” are from the same. One takes umbrage when slighted or can “throw some shade”.
Members of the umbellifer family include many edibles: carrots, parsnips, celery, parsley, dill, lovage, fennel, anise, coriander, cumin, and caraway. As vegetables or herbal seasoning they are staples of our diets. But some do not care for them. The travel writer, Jan Morris, recalled a dinner where she offered a plate of parsnips to the curator of the herbarium at Oxford only to be told that he “seldom ate Umbelliferae”.
Sometimes the umbellifer family is referred to as the parsley family. Petroselinum crispum, or parsley, has a long history with humans. The Greeks called it rock celery (petros is Greek for rock) and associated it with death. Myths claimed that the plant grew from the spilled blood of Archemorus, son of Death. The herb was strewn over corpses, which explains the saying, “He has need now of nothing but a little parsley.” And yet, athletes were crowned with wreathes of parsley. In monasteries monks grew parsley for the healing properties and the essential oils, but it continued to be considered an evil plant. Parsley seed is slow to germinate and the belief was that it had to go down to the devil nine times before it sprouted. In ancient England the plant became associated with women. “Where the missus is the master, the parsley grows faster” was said; children who asked where babies came from were told “the parsley bed”. It was believed that sowing parsley seeds led to pregnancy and chewing on the seeds prevented it.
Today parsley does not carry such heavy baggage. The flat-leafed, or Italian, P. crispum var. neopolitanum has a stronger flavor than the curly-leafed variety. We often find parsley used as a garnish on a plate of food. It was originally put there to be chewed at the end of the meal to freshen the breath and it is eaten to aid digestion as Peter Rabbit did. Parsley is best chopped and eaten raw; heating kills its flavor. And take the advice of Italian cook, Marcella Hazan: “do not ever use dried parsley, which is tasteless.”
Another umbellifer long domesticated by humans is dill, Anethum graveolens. Five thousand years ago it was used in ancient Egypt; it was mentioned in the Bible; and the poet, Edmund Spenser wrote in the 1500s about “head purging dill”. Many claim that it soothes the nerves and an upset stomach. The Norse word “dilla” meaning “calm” is the origin of the name. I have not noticed any calming effect from the plant, but I am always happy to see the self-sown seedlings in the spring and adore the lime green umbel in the garden or inside in a vase. My favorite use is in making dilly beans, tangy reminders of the garden with pickled beans and an umbel of dill.
Along el camino real , the trail linking twenty-one missions from San Diego to San Francisco, the roadsides are populated by wild fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, descendants of plants sown by Spanish explorers. Common fennel is grown for its foliage and seeds, which are often chewed to sweeten the breath (think of the candied seeds in the lobbies of many Indian restaurants). A cultivar, ‘Purpureum’, or bronze fennel, is used as an ornamental with dark, feathery foliage and yellow umbels. F. vulgare var. Azoricum, is the Florence fennel, finocchio. It produces a white bulb above the ground which has a delicious, anise flavor, raw or cooked.
The giant fennel, Ferula communis, is a perennial that sends up a ten- foot stalk with sprouting clusters of chartreuse umbels. I lusted after this plant after seeing it in its majesty in an Irish garden of June Blake where I visited in 2018 (and took the photo, above), but it is too tender to survive our winter. In mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the lightening bolt of Zeus, stored it in a dried stalk of giant fennel and returned it to humans. The first Olympic Games emulated this act by using the stalks for the Olympic torch.
If you go to pick some parsley, dill, or fennel and find most of the leaves eaten, look carefully for a strikingly beautiful caterpillar, striped black and white with yellow dots on the black. It is the young of the eastern black swallowtail butterfly. Plant a lot of umbellifers. Share with the wild creatures.
The umbellifers form a large and interesting family. Next month I will explore the more dangerous, deadly, and detested members.
August, 2020
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