Sunday, July 25, 2010

Sidalcea 'Party Girl'

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Fewer hybrid tea roses, tall and red yuccas, lilies, daylilies under trees, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Russian sage, buddleia, rose of Sharon, purple phlox, lingering bouncing Bess, Sensation cosmos, zinnia, alfalfa, cucumbers; corn tasseling.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, winterfat, Queen Anne’s lace, fern-leaf and leather-leaf globemallows, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, datura, bush morning glory, stickleaf, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, pigweed, Russian thistle, goat’s beard, hawkweed, paper flower, spiny lettuce, horseweed, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, few native sunflowers, Tahokia daisies, goldenrod, sideoats grama.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, blackberry lily, golden spur columbine, last year’s snapdragon, Harweig evening primrose, squash, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower, first chrysanthemum.

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, Jupiter’s beard, coral beardtongue, sea pink, large-leaf soapwort, Maltese cross, pink salvia, pink evening primrose, Saint John’s wort, reseeded morning glory, garlic chives; buds on Autumn Joy sedum and cut-leaf coneflower.

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, Illinois bundle flower, sweet peas; tomatillo has first pod.

Looking west: Caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, blue speedwell, spurge, blue flax, sea lavender, perennial four o’clock, purple coneflower; Mönch aster; buds on David phlox.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum, tomato..

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geraniums, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds in pairs, geckos, bees, grasshoppers, black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: After more than a week of barren thunderstorms, we started getting rain Thursday; by Saturday the weeds had responded; 14:02 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Why ever would anyone cross a wildflower that only grows on the Pacific coast with one found in a small area of the Rocky mountains and expect to produce a hybrid that could compete in the mass market?

Jeff Cox was mincingly accurate when he said sidalcea hybrids were not for everyone. He wasn’t referring to a quirky taste for spiky plants with small, pinkish mallow flowers, but the fact that ornamental sidalceas only thrive in California, the coastal northwest and the warmer parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, New York, and New England. Anywhere else is problematical.

Alan Armitage was more forthright when he said the sidalcea hybrid he grew in his Athens, Georgia, garden behaved so poorly that "misery was its middle name." No matter how improved, they can’t handle the "heat and humidity of the midwestern and eastern states."

I haven’t yet found the person who admits to this experiment, but the seeds come from German companies. Jelitto introduced Bianca and Rosanna in 1989, then Purpetta in 1991. The seeds for the one I’m growing, Party Girl, are sold by Ernst Benary. Santa Fe Greenhouse offered it for the first time in 1994.

The attempt to domesticate wildflowers has gone through phases. William Robinson was reacting against formal plantings when he began promoting herbaceous perennial borders. Even so, in the 1889 edition of The English Flower Garden, he thought sidalceas "scarcely suitable for cultivation."

He noted Sidalcea malvaeflora, acerifolia, and oregana were being grown. These plants are the ones people would have discovered who went hunting for gold in California forty years before. Malvaeflora, one of the parents of Party Grow, is found in coastal prairies and scrub lands from Curry County, Oregon, to Baja.

When he revised his book in 1899 Robinson observed prairie mallows were "fast becoming better known" even though they couldn’t survive the cold winters of England. By then, species found when the Leadville silver mines opened Colorado in 1879 were becoming available. He thought the best were candida and malvaeflora, which were already available in variants, but he also mentioned oregana and spicata.

Candida, the other parent of Party Girl, was collected by Augustus Fendler growing along Santa Fé Creek in 1847, and has been found around Chama, and in the Las Vegas, Sandia, White and Sacramento mountains, where it grows on wet ground. The creeping rootstock appears in most counties of Utah, and scattered areas in the neighboring states of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming.

The sidalceas were marketed as miniature hollyhocks, a description that reveals the paradox of using wild plants in a formal garden. Even though Robinson advocated gardens that were more natural than carpet beds, herbaceous borders still feature unnaturally dense concentrations of perennials that produce more flowers than leaves.

Hollyhocks would never fit: their leaves are large and prone to insect damage; the stalks get rangy as they lengthen and the flowers more scattered. Sidalceas have basal rosettes of dark green, round leaves. The stems are narrow, and, in good conditions, divide into branches. The racemes resemble larkspur more than anything else.

Even in bad years, the dark leaves remain uneaten, and a few short stems appear with some flowers. However, they are members of the mallow family and will go to seed. I’m not the only one to discover the flower color is not exactly "bright rose-pink." In my climate the five petals are generally lavender, although they may appear pink in the morning or early in the summer.

The most recent interest in domesticating sidalceas occurred after the environmental activism of the 1970's when seedsmen like Karl Jelitto began introducing perennials that could be grown from seed, rather than more labor intensive cuttings.

The German cultivars coincided with an interest in natural plantings that featured ornamental grasses and plants that could survive minimally watered prairie plantings. Cox remarked that in such "a wild landscape lush with native flowers, pink flowered prairie mallow is one of the prettiest."

My first Party Girls always bloomed, continuously if not profusely, in a dry, wind location, but died out in five years. The replacements I bought in 2006 never got particularly tall in front of the retaining wall until last year, when one dropped its leathery seeds in the blue grama grass along the walk where its blooming now. The lobed leaves escaped their cultivated border and returned to familiar turf.

Notes:
Abrams, Le Roy and Roxana Stinchfield Ferris. An Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States, 1923.

Armitage, Allan M. Herbaceous Perennial Plants, 1989.

Cox, Jeff. Perennial All-Stars, 2002.

Fendler, Augustus. Plantae Fendlerianae, edited by Asa Gray, 1849.

Robinson, William. The English Flower Garden, 1889 and 1899 editions

Wooten, Elmer Otis and Paul Carpenter Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915.

Photograph: Sidalcea ‘Party Girl’ with blue grama grass and Maltese Cross leaves after the first rain in weeks, 24 July 2010.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Veronica 'Goodness Grows'

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, tall yucca, lilies, Spanish broom, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Russian sage, purple phlox, Shasta daisies, Sensation cosmos, zinnia, purple coneflower, alfalfa; small and large yellow flowers, probably cucumbers and pumpkins or squash.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, four-winged saltbush, winterfat, Queen Anne’s lace, fern-leaf and leather-leaf globemallows, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, nits and lice, bindweed, datura, bush morning glory, stickleaf, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, pigweed, Russian thistle, goat’s beard, hawkweed, paper flower, spiny lettuce, horseweed, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, one native sunflower.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, golden spur columbine, last year’s snapdragon, Harweig evening primrose, butterfly weed, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower; bud on blackberry lily.

Looking east: Dr. Huey and floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, Jupiter’s beard, baby’s breath, bouncing Bess, coral beardtongue, sea pink, large-leaf soapwort, Maltese cross, pink salvia, pink evening primrose, Saint John’s wort, reseeded morning glory; buds on garlic chives, Autumn Joy sedum and cut-leaf coneflower.

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, Illinois bundle flower, sweet peas.

Looking west: Caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, blue speedwell, spurge, blue flax, sea lavender; buds on Mönch asters.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum.

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geraniums, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird on coral beardtongue, goldfinches on chocolate flower, geckos, cabbage butterfly, hummingbird moth on bouncing Bess, large bees on catmint, grasshoppers, black harvester and small red ants; hear crickets.

Weather: Another week of broken promises with polluted air, high temperatures and lying clouds that leave no rain; last rain 07/08/09; 14:14 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: The rarest thing of all is a plant that grows as advertised.

Take speedwells. Back when I was buying plants in Michigan, Wayside Gardens said they’re "among the most useful of hardy perennials. By judicious selection, you can have flowers from June through September. The neat, compact plants are beautiful, even when not in bloom."

Lamb Nurseries called them "underrated" and of "outstanding importance" before adding they "bloom with such abandon that we rank them among the choicest of low-growing plants."

Well naturally I gave them a try, and nothing happened. Most of the plants didn’t survive, and those that did only filled space.

I’m not sure now why I ordered some plants for here in 1998, other than desperation to find something blue. I no longer took comments like those from White Flower Farm that Goodness Grows was "the best of the lot" that "blooms forever." I just knew it wasn’t the same cultivar I’d tried before.

The next two summers the young plants bloomed from late June until late July, then either didn’t flower or only put up a few short spikes for a few weeks. This year, the long, narrow flowers started opening at the base June 20, and only now are the last flowers appearing at the top of spikes that have lengthened to 4" on stalks up to 11" tall.

They haven’t reached the size promised by growers, a foot or more in height above mats that spread 18", but this is northern New Mexico. The rhizomatous roots have crept along the soaker hose on the west side of the house as far as there’s enough water, but no more than 3" on either side.

The little plant does have its wayward side. Marc Richardson and Rick Berry discovered it growing in a trial garden at their nursery in Lexington, Georgia. Michael Farrow has since patented a pink variety he found in 2003 in his Holly Hill Farms bed in Earlville, Maryland.

The Missouri Botanical Garden believes Goodness Grows is a natural cross between Veronica alpina 'Alba' and Veronica spicata that combines the compact size of the one with the tall racemes of the other.

Since no spicata variety ever grew for me, I think the perennial took its adaptability from the alpine parent. This past winter we had rain in late January that lingered as ice until the first of March. I suspect something in those unusual conditions is responsible for the number and size of this year’s spikes.

Dirk Albach has been particularly interested in the relationship between the great glaciers and the eight alpine Veronicas within the figwort family and found variation within this species existed in the European Alps and that adaptions to conditions had occurred multiple times. He confirmed the suspicion that alpine plants have larger genomes that somehow translate into better "growth by cell division conducted in the preceding favourable season and cell expansion early in the season at low temperatures."

Why a glacial plant would survive in an arid mountain valley in New Mexico is probably related to its adaptability. In central Scotland it grows near the snow line on the sides of mountains where "reflected heat is greatest." However, when it was taken to the 800' piedmont of Georgia it crossed with a spicata.

I suspect that if our weather returns to what passes for normal, the flowers will be fewer next summer but the dark, elliptical leaves will continue to stop grass and other weeds from emerging. That ability alone is rare in a groundcover, and worth having.

Notes:
Albach, Dirk C. and J. Greilhuber. "Genome Size Variation and Evolution in Veronica," Annals of Botany 94:897-911:2004.

_____, P. Schönswetter, and A. Tribsch. "Comparative Phylogeography of the Veronica alpina Complex in Europe and North America," Molecular Ecology 15:3269-86:2006.

Brewster, David and Richard R. Yeo. The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, Volume 9, 1999.

Farrow, Michael. Patent application for ‘Tickled Pink,’ published 24 November 2005.18

Goodness Grows, Inc. Website.

Lamb Nurseries. Catalog, 1986.

Missouri Botanical Garden. "Veronica 'Goodness Grows'," Plant Finder website.

Wayside Gardens. Catalog, spring 1986.

White Flower Farm. Website.

Photograph: Veronica ‘Goodness Grows’ with purple coneflower leaf, 11 July 2010.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Santa Fé Thistle

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Tea roses, hybrid daylilies, tall yucca bending, Spanish broom, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Russian sage, purple phlox, larkspur, datura, Shasta daisies, Sensation cosmos, zinnia, alfalfa.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, four-winged saltbush, winterfat, cholla, Queen Anne’s lace, fern-leaf and leather-leaf globemallows, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white evening primrose, milkweed, bindweed, bush morning glory, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, dandelion, goat’s beard, hawkweed, paper flower, spiny lettuce, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters; buds on prickly pear and horseweed.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, daylily, golden spur columbine, last year’s snapdragon, Harweig evening primrose, butterfly weed, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower; bud on blackberry lily; beans forming on catalpa.

Looking east: Dr. Huey and floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, Jupiter’s beard, baby’s breath, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, coral beardtongue, sea pink, large-leaf soapwort, Maltese cross, pink salvia, pink evening primrose, Saint John’s wort, reseeded morning glory; buds on garlic chives, tomatillo and Autumn Joy sedum.

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, Illinois bundle flower, sweet peas; ripe raspberries.

Looking west: Lilies, catmint, lady bells, blue speedwell, spurge, blue flax, sea lavender; buds on purple coneflower.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, tomato.

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geraniums, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird on coral beardtongue, goldfinshes on chocolate flower, geckos, cabbage butterfly, hummingbird moths on bouncing Bess, large bees on catmint, smaller ones on Mexican hat, grasshoppers, cricket, large black harvester and small red ants, worms.

Weather: Rain Thursday night; 14:24 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: There’s no mistaking a thistle.

They begin as pineapple shaped buds that open wide enough to push up rosy purple bristles that fan out before turning into white down to carry away brown seeds. Some years along the road through San Ildefonso, the flowers of bull thistles tip majestic green plants that can grow more than six feet, covered with bristly leaves that can reach out a foot.

The ones I saw last Sunday were only a foot high, but weren’t miniaturized bull thistles. The stems were gray white and looked smooth from a distance, though I’ve since read they were covered with fine hairs. The leaves were narrow and proportionally longer, with a yellowish thorn at the end of each long lobe. Instead of reaching out, they curved and twisted down to armor the plant.

Unlike the bull thistles that came from Europe, the Santa Fe thistles I saw are local, ranging from the central plains of Wyoming and Colorado down through the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, and Sonora.

Eva Häffner and Frank Hellwig believe the Cirsium genus of thistles evolved in the Mediterranean, while Dean Kelch and Bruce Baldwin have found a single species crossed into North America to quickly diverge into the many species found today, abetted by the movements of the great glaciers. Indeed, the USDA reports at least ten species growing in Rio Arriba county: Cirsium arvense (Canada), calcareum, neomexicanum, ochrocentrum (yellow-spine or Santa Fe), pallidum, parryi, scariosum, undulatum (wavy leaf), vulgare (bull) and wheeleri.

Some resemble one another more than others, but they all have the characteristic bulb and brush flowers. The similarities have led people to substitute one for another, and ochrocentrum can hybridize with undulatum, adding to the sense that thistles exist on a continuum.

Among the Zuñi, yellow-spined ko’wakätsi plants were used to treat syphilis, a disease Matilda Coxe Stevenson noted had become more widespread since she first visited in 1879. Lenora Curtin found Spanish speakers of northern New Mexico used wavy-leaved cardo santo flowers for gonorrhea, a use also reported by the Comanche who menaced the area between 1746 and 1786, then traded with the surviving settlers.

More recently, Scott Camazine and Robert Bye found the Zuñi were using fresh or dried roots of Santa Fe thistles to treat diabetes. Interestingly, thistles are one of the plants southwestern tribes tested when confronted with diseases brought by the Spanish and Americans: the Navajo used calcareum to treat malaria and rothrockii for smallpox.

While thistles are common in the west, they’re not particularly wide spread in this immediate area. The Santa Fe thistles take two years to flower and may survive to become perennials or die out after blooming.

The three I saw were growing on the side of an arroyo which had cut its path through the gravely dirt of Santa Fe composites formed before the Rio Grande flowed. It had just rained after more than a month of heat and high winds, and they were quickly moving from flowering to reproduction.

Two were probably linked by underground roots, and the one to the east may have been connected or may come from another seed. The plants are self-fertile, so the white down I saw could plant itself and perpetuate the colony, or blow far away to land in the inhospitable prairie or friendlier, disturbed steppe.

Notes:
Curtin, Leonora Scott Muse. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished 1997, with revisions by Michael Moore.

Häffner, Eva and Frank H. Hellwig. "Phylogeny of the Tribe Carueae (Compositae) with Emphasis on the Subtribe Carduinae: An Anlysis Based on ITS Sequence Data," Willdenowia 29:27-39:1999.

Keil, David J. "Cirsium Miller," efloras website on glaciers.

Kelch, Dean G. and Bruce G. Baldwin "Phylogeny and Ecological Radiation of New World Thistles (Cirsium, Cardueae - Compositae) Based on ITS and ETS rDNA Sequence Data," Molecular Ecology 12:141-151:2003.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998, summarizes data from a number of ethnographies including; Gustav G. Carlson and Volney H. Jones," Some Notes on Uses of Plants by the Comanche Indians," Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters Papers 25:517-542:1940; Scott Camazine and Robert A. Bye, "A Study Of The Medical Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico," Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2:365-388:1980; Francis H. Elmore, Ethnobotany of the Navajo, 1944, and Leland C. Wyman and Stuart K. Harris, The Ethnobotany of the Kayenta Navaho, 1951.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians, 1915.

United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. New Mexico county distribution maps for Cirsium species.

Photograph: Santa Fe thistle growing in bank of Santa Fe composites, 7 July 2010.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

Queen Anne's Lace

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Tea roses, lilies, hybrid daylilies, tall and red yuccas, Spanish broom, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Russian sage in town, larkspur, datura, Shasta daisies, zinnia, alfalfa, onions; harvesting garlic yesterday in town.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, four-winged saltbush, winterfat, cholla, Queen Anne’s lace, tumble mustard, fern-leaf and leather-leaf globemallows, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white evening primrose, nits and lice, milkweed, bindweed, bush morning glory, Dutch, white prairie, purple, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, Indian paintbrush, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, native dandelion, goat’s beard, hawkweed, paper flower, chicory, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters; buds on prickly pear.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, daylily, red hot poker, golden spur columbine, Harweig evening primrose, butterfly weed, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower.

Looking east: Dr. Huey and floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, Jupiter’s beard, baby’s breath, Bath’s pink, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, coral beardtongue, last year’s pink snapdragon, sea pink, Maltese cross, pink salvia, pink evening primrose; buds on garlic chives.

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, sweet peas; ripe raspberries.

Looking west: Catmint, blue speedwell, blue salvia, spurge, blue flax; buds on lilies, sea lavender, ladybells, purple coneflower.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, nicotiana, tomato; buds on snapdragons.

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geraniums, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, geckos, cabbage butterfly, hummingbird moth on bouncing Bess, bees on catmint, small grasshoppers, large black harvester and small red ants, hear crickets.

Weather: Finally some rain Friday night; fire continues in the Jemez, although smoke’s no longer visible; 14:32 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: I learned my first conservation lessons from Queen Anne’s lace.

Like many children, I picked the clusters of five-petaled flowers for my mother, and was disappointed when they wilted by the time I got them home. I saw jars of dying wild flowers, including this one, in the dining lodge every year at summer camp and concluded there are flowers I shouldn’t pick.

I also learned that just because a flower’s pretty from a distance doesn’t mean it’s necessarily nice. When I was young, the faded green plant was nearly as tall as I. When I brushed against it, I discovered it was quite rough, covered with white hairs. It also didn’t smell very good and was often covered with small insects. The flowers are a good nectar source for flies and wasps, while the leaves feed black swallow tails. Bigger animals tend to leave the bitter leaves alone.

I eventually learned that plants like the biennial Queen Anne’s lace depend entirely on their seeds for reproduction, and every picked flower was a lost opportunity. The camp director instilled a spirit of inhibition that still influences my behavior. I almost never pick or pull a wild flower, and then only after I’ve checked that there are lots of other plants nearby.

I suspected then she was less motivated by any sense of environmentalism, than by a concern that if every child indulged her instincts, the camp would be picked bare by the end of summer and not recover the following year. We were raised with a sense of deprivation because the camp population, dominated by young girls, that changed every Sunday for seven weeks, really was too dense for nature to support.

The wild carrot remained part of the world that existed outside my car window. I could recognize the brilliant white, flat heads from any distance in early summer, and tended to ignore the ones that were going to seed, the ones that were folding up and looked like they were engulfed by green cobwebs. The British call the inverted umbrellas bird’s nest.

I knew them as soon as I saw them growing along a ditch with bouncing Bess, between a catalpa and coyote fence, in the village. I was a bit surprised - they do best in areas with 32" to 40" of precipitation a year - but there was no doubt.

V. I. Mackevec found the greatest diversity for Daucus carota existed in Afghanistan where the Hindu Kush and Himalaya meet. The wild plant spread to Greece where it was mentioned by Hippocrates around 400bc and seeds have been found in the lake dwellings of Switzerland which existed at roughly the same time.

Today, John Kartesz reports Queen Anne’s lace in every state and province except Manitoba. However, Edward Voss says it only became established in Michigan in the 1880's, and his map shows it growing along the lakes and in the wetland counties where I was raised. The reports of native use, surveyed by Dan Moerman, indicate it was only used in the east from the Cherokee of the south to the Micmac of the north and in the Pacific northwest, but wasn’t common enough to be exploited in the area between. It wasn’t listed in New Mexico in 1915, and has had only one report since.

While it was always part of my world, it was never in my world. It never grew in a yard or nearby field, where I could watch it produce a basal rosette of carroty leaves one year and a flower the next. I never had a reason to pull it from a garden, and can only take other people’s word that the tough, white taproot is parent to the modern carrot.

I’ve since learned that women in India, China, Appalachia and the ancient world used the seeds to abort a pregnancy in the first week, a usage supported by scientific research. I can guarantee that’s something we didn’t learn at camp, although it might have been useful than some of the things we did learn.

Notes:Heil, K.D, and S.L. O'Kane, Jr. Catalog of the Four Corners Flora - Vascular Plants of the San Juan River Drainage: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, 6th ed, 2002, report it in San Juan County.

Hilty, John. "Wild Carrot," Illinois Wildflowers website, on insect associations.

Keller, Ferdinand. The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and Other Parts of Europe, volume 1, 1878.

Kartesz, John T. "Daucus carota L.," distribution maps on USDA Plant Profiles website.

Mackevic, V. I. "The Carrot of Afghanistan," Bulletin of Applied Botany, Genetics and Plant Breeding 20:517-562:1929.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998; summarizes data from a number of ethnographies.

Riddle, John M. Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, 1992, includes scientific references.

Voss, Edward G. Michigan Flora, volume 2, 1986.

Wooton, Elmer O. and Paul C. Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915, reprinted by J. Cramer, 1972, does not mention Queen Anne’s lace.

Photograph: Queen Anne’s lace in village, 28 June 2010.