Plants
Daucus carota
EOL Text
The domesticated carrot (D. carota sativus) is grown throughout the world.
Wild carrot (D. carota carota) is native to temperate regions of Europe and western Asia, and has been introduced into America, New Zealand, Australia and Japan (Rong et al. 2010 and references therein).
Wild carrot is found throughout the eastern states and along the south and west coasts of the United States, in Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. It occurs throughout the British Isles, where it is especially abundant near the sea. It also occurs from Norway and central Sweden south to North Africa and the Canary Islands, and eastward through Siberia to northern and eastern India. (Mitich 1996 and references therein)
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Flowering from May to July.
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Rights holder/Author | Wen, Jun, Wen, Jun, Plants of Tibet |
Source | http://plantsoftibet.lifedesks.org/pages/1293 |
Daucus carota, whose common names include wild carrot, bird's nest, bishop's lace, and Queen Anne's lace (North America), is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae, native to temperate regions of Europe, southwest Asia and naturalized to North America and Australia. Domesticated carrots are cultivars of a subspecies, Daucus carota subsp. sativus.
Contents
§Description[edit]
The wild carrot is a herbaceous, somewhat variable biennial plant that grows between 30 and 60 centimetres (1 and 2 ft) tall, roughly hairy, with a stiff solid stem. The leaves are tri-pinnate, finely divided and lacy, overall triangular in shape. The flowers are small and dull white, clustered in flat, dense umbels. They may be pink in bud and there may be a reddish flower in the centre of the umbel. The lower bracts are three-forked or pinnate, a fact which distinguishes the plant from other white-flowered umbellifers. As the seeds develop, the umbel curls up at the edges, becomes more congested, and develops a concave surface. The fruits are oval and flattened, with short styles and hooked spines.[1] The dried umbels detach from the plant, becoming tumbleweeds.[2]
Similar in appearance to the deadly poison hemlock, D. carota is distinguished by a mix of tri-pinnate leaves, fine hairs on its solid green stems and on its leaves, a root that smells like carrots, and occasionally a single dark red flower in the centre of the umbel.[3][4]
§Uses[edit]
Like the cultivated carrot, the D. carota root is edible while young, but quickly becomes too woody to consume.
Extra caution should be used when collecting D. carota because it bears a close resemblance to poison hemlock. In addition, the leaves of the wild carrot can cause phytophotodermatitis,[5] so caution should also be used when handling the plant.
If used as a dyestuff, the flowers give a creamy, off-white color.
Folk-medicine holds that an infusion of the seeds will inhibit pregnancy.
D. carota, when freshly cut, will draw or change color depending on the color of the water in which it is held. Note that this effect is only visible on the "head" or flower of the plant. Carnations also exhibit this effect. This occurrence is a popular science demonstration in primary grade school.
§Beneficial weed[edit]
This beneficial weed can be used as a companion plant to crops. Like most members of the umbellifer family, it attracts wasps to its small flowers in its native land; however, where it has been introduced, it attracts only very few of such wasps. This species is also documented to boost tomato plant production when kept nearby, and it can provide a microclimate of cooler, moister air for lettuce, when intercropped with it.[citation needed]
However, the USDA has listed it as a noxious weed,[6] and it is considered a serious pest in pastures. It persists in the soil seed bank for two to five years.[7]
§Queen Anne's lace[edit]
D. carota was introduced and naturalised in North America, where it is often known as "Queen Anne's lace". Both Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and her great grandmother Anne of Denmark are taken to be the Queen Anne for which the plant is named.[8] It is so called because the flower resembles lace; the red flower in the center is thought to represent a blood droplet where Queen Anne pricked herself with a needle when she was making the lace. The function of the tiny red flower, coloured by anthocyanin, is to attract insects.
§Taxonomy[edit]
Carrot was first officially described by Carolus Linnaeus in his 1753 work Species Plantarum.[9] It has acquired several synonyms in its taxonomic history:[10]
- Daucus abyssinicus C.A. Mey.
- Daucus carota convar. afganicus Setchkarev
- Daucus carota convar. sativus Setchkarev
- Daucus carota L. subsp. sativus (Hoffm.) Thell.
- Daucus carota L. var. atrorubens Alef.
- Daucus carota L. var. sativus DC.
- Daucus carota L. var. sativus Hoffm.
- Daucus carota var. sativus Hoffm.
- Daucus gingidium L.
- Daucus sativa (Hoffm.) Pass.
§See also[edit]
§Notes[edit]
- ^ McClintock, David; Fitter, R.S.R. (1956). The Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers. Collins. p. 103.
- ^ Faulkner, Herbert Waldron (1917). The Mysteries of the Flowers. Frederick A. Stokes. p. 210.
- ^ Noxious weeds: Poison-hemlock, King County, Washington
- ^ Hemlock Poisoning, Medscape
- ^ Phytophotodermatitis Clinical Presentation, Medscape
- ^ USDA PLANTS. PLANTS Profile for Daucus carota (Queen Anne's lace. Retrieved June 11, 2007.
- ^ Clark, D. L.; Wilson, M. V. (2003). "Post-dispersal seed fates of four prairie species". American Journal of Botany 90 (5): 730. doi:10.3732/ajb.90.5.730.
- ^ "Queen Ann's Lace". Retrieved November 10, 2012.
- ^ Linnaeus, Carolus (1753). Species Plantarum (in Latin) 1. Stockholm: Laurentii Salvii. p. 242.
- ^ Kays, Stanley J. (2011). "3. Latin binomials and synonyms". Cultivated Vegetables of the World: A Multilingual Onomasticon. Wageningen Academic Publishers. pp. 617–708. ISBN 978-90-8686-720-2.
§Bibliography[edit]
- Blanchan, Neltje (2005). Wild Flowers Worth Knowing. Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.
- Bradeen, James M.; Simon, Philipp W. (2007). "Carrot". In Cole, Chittaranjan (ed.). Vegetables. Genome Mapping and Molecular Breeding in Plants 5. New York, New York: Springer. pp. 162–184. ISBN 978-3-540-34535-0.
- Clapham, A. R.; Tutin, T. G.; Warburg, E. F. (1962). Flora of the British Isles. Cambridge University Press.
- Mabey, Richard (1997). Flora Britannica. London: Chatto and Windus.
- Rose, Francis (2006). The Wild Flower Key (edition revised and expanded by Clare O'Reilly). London: Frederick Warne. ISBN 0-7232-5175-4.
- Rubatsky, V.E.; Quiros, C.F.; Siman, P.W. (1999). Carrots and Related Vegetable Umbelliferae. CABI Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85199-129-0.
§External links[edit]
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Rights holder/Author | Wikipedia |
Source | http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daucus_carota&oldid=650745895 |
Distribution: A cosmopolitan plant.
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Rights holder/Author | eFloras.org Copyright © Missouri Botanical Garden |
Source | http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=5&taxon_id=200015518 |
The following comes from Dale (1974). Daucus carota is protandrous; on an individual flower, the gynoecium (egg) is still immature when the pollen is released. Long filaments can facilitate self-fertilization of adjacent flowers when insect pollination fails. Seeds of the terminal, primary umbel mature first, are largest, have the highest viability, and have two to three times the number of seeds as do subsequent umbels. The umbel dries as it matures and breaks open, scattering the seeds. Flowers appear from May through October, and seeds mature and are released from mid-summer to mid-winter. The seeds have barbs, which promote dispersal by animals and wind (Gross and Werner 1982). There is no evidence for vegetative reproduction.
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Rights holder/Author | Nancy Eckardt, NatureServe |
Source | http://explorer.natureserve.org/servlet/NatureServe?searchName=Daucus+carota |
It is a common plant both in the hills and the plains. The carrot is cultivated throughout our area.
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Rights holder/Author | eFloras.org Copyright © Missouri Botanical Garden |
Source | http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=5&taxon_id=200015518 |
Plants biennial, 15 cm to 1 m tall. Root a thick tap-root. Stem glabrous to pilose; hairs white. Leaves compound, 2-3-pinnate, hispid; segments linear to oval; margin deeply toothed; tips mucronate. Peduncles up to 30 cm long, his¬pid. Involucre of pinnately divided bracts, up to 5 cm long; segments filiform to linear. Rays numerous, the outer longer, incurved. Involucel of undivided or divided bractlets; margins entire or ciliate. Calyx teeth minute. Petals white to yellowish or light purple, the outer radiate; the petals of the central flower of an umbel sometimes red. Ovary hispid; styles 0.5 to 1 mm long. Fruit ovoid, 2-3 mm long; primary ridges not prominent, slightly bristly; secondary ridges winged, spiny; spines white; one vitta under each secondary ridge; commissure 2-vittate.
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Source | http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=5&taxon_id=200015518 |
The complete carrot plastid genome is 155,911 bp in length, with 115 unique genes and 21 duplicated genes within the IR. Phylogenetic analysis of nucleotide sequences for 61 protein-coding genes using both maximum parsimony (MP) and maximum likelihood (ML) were performed for 29 angiosperms. Phylogenies from both methods provide strong support for the monophyly of several major angiosperm clades, including monocots, eudicots, rosids, asterids, eurosids II, euasterids I, and euasterids II. Both MP and ML trees provide very strong support (100% bootstrap) for the sister relationship of Daucus with Panax in the euasterid II clade (Ruhlman et al., 2006).
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Rights holder/Author | Wen, Jun, Wen, Jun, Plants of Tibet |
Source | http://plantsoftibet.lifedesks.org/pages/1293 |
The fruit used for medicine (“hu luo bo”) and oil.
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Rights holder/Author | eFloras.org Copyright © Missouri Botanical Garden |
Source | http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200015518 |
Daucus carota is native to southwest Asia and parts of Europe, with a suggested center of diversity in Afghanistan. In its native habitats, this species often occurs on mountain slopes from 2000 to 3000 meters in elevation; however, the species has been aggressively bred and cultivated as a food plant beginning about 3000 BC. Consequently the present habitats include much lower elevations and substantial appearance in cultivation and at waste places.
Commonly known as Wild carrot or Queen Anne's lace, this herb can attain a height of 120 centimeters, and exhibits a generally branched growth habit.
Leaves have petioles of three to ten centimters and blades of five to fifteen centimeters.
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Rights holder/Author | C. Michael Hogan, C. Michael Hogan |
Source | No source database. |