By ANN ALLEN
Indiana Correspondent

AKRON, Ind. — The young girl watched in fascination as her pet calf did a frenzied dance in the pasture – and then cried in horror when the calf dropped dead.

“It ate wild carrot,” her father explained.

Over the years, the girl, now a grandmother, watched in disbelief as friends gathered the bloom of wild carrot, often called Queen Anne’s Lace, to use in floral arrangements. She read recipes for Queen Anne’s Lace jelly and shuddered at the thought of eating something that had killed her pet.

According to Mark Kepler, Purdue University extension educator in Fulton County, however, it wasn’t wild carrot that killed the calf. It was poison hemlock, a plant that looks like Queen Anne’s Lace but tastes so bad humans aren’t likely to die from it.

Whether it is called Queen Anne’s Lace or wild carrot, the plant is common in dry fields, ditches and open areas. Blooming from May-October, its white, lacy flowers stick above other plants, often growing four feet tall.

A biennial – meaning it lives for two years, spending the first year growing bigger before blooming the second year – it tends to be prolific. One seed head can produce 1,000 seeds that persist in the soil for as long as seven years. It has an edible taproot that looks like a carrot, hence the name wild carrot. It is believed domestic carrots evolved from this root.

Best known for its flowers – tiny and white, blooming in lacy, flat-topped clusters centered with a dark, purplish center – Queen Anne’s Lace acquired its name from one of two queens. Queen Anne of Denmark died of dropsy, one of the diseases the plant is said to cure.

Another Queen Anne is sometimes credited for the name because of the flowers’ ability to produce lace. The red center of the flower is supposed to be a drop of her blood when she pricked her finger while making lace.

In a recent column, Kepler noted the plant is often studied for medicinal uses, such as the dropsy that felled the Danish queen, and even as a contraceptive. “I guess if you are out pulling this weed from your garden, you won’t find yourself in a situation where you could become pregnant,” he wrote, tongue-in-cheek.

Overall, it would seem the plant is a weed that produces flowers delightful to look at, but with leaves that are toxic as well as being skin irritants. People such as the doubting grandmother, uncertain whether a plant is Queen Anne’s Lace or poison hemlock, would do well to eradicate the plant and not take any chances with it.