Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's Lace is a treasure. Coming to bloom in early summer, the action doesn't start until its fragrance becomes just right to attract wasps, bumble bees, honey bees and green flies, not to mention ants of all varieties and butterflies of many persuasions.

Factoid: Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods.

Not bad for a wild carrot that plays well with tomatoes and lettuce and provides a banquet for insects both small and large as seen by an alpha wasp helping itself to a midday snack of nectar. :) Enjoy.

Queen Anne’s lace earned its common name from a legend that tells of Queen Anne of England (1665-1714) pricking her finger and a drop of blood landed on white lace she was sewing.