Wild Flowering Carrot
(Chocolate Lace Flower, False Queen Anne’s Lace)
Daucus carota 'Dara'
Daucus carota is the wild but inedible version of the well known culinary vegetable. The common species has white flowers, whilst the specially bred 'Dara' which we have for sale, has the most beautiful colour range of blooms from palest pink right through to deep burgundy, often with a few white flowers for contrast.
The foliage is a grey – green and feathery like a carrot. The flowers are arranged on tall, open stems and open into flat, wide umbels or plates. If harvested, or dead headed, regularly Daucus will continue to bloom right through until the first frosts.
Daucus is a biennial but can flower the same year as sowing, if planted quite early in the spring.
Sowing March – May will give flowers the same year. Later sowings will give a plant which will over winter and flower early in the subsequent year.
This is a plant which appreciates a well drained soil, we have grown some great crops in raised beds and also deep containers in areas with plenty of sunlight.
The hundreds of tiny flowers in each flower head are full of nectar, which pollinating insects love. These are plants which look lovely sown thinly as a lacy filler in a permanent border, or amongst the taller shrubby herbs such as rosemary and sage bushes in the herb garden. They also look good in areas of naturalised and meadow planting, where they can be sown in patches of open soil near paths and edges as they prefer disturbed earth.
Daucus flowers are hugely popular with floral arrangers right now, added to mixed bunches of flowers they give a natural contemporary look.