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.

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