Now Growing in a Parking Lot Near You

One of many wild carrots we found growing at the edge of a church parking lot.

I'm sure I made an interesting sight as I knelt at the edge of the church parking lot after services, asparagus knife (see photo) in hand and a plant book at my side. One woman called quizzically as she got in her car, "What are you finding?" "Wild carrots," I replied. She raised her eyebrows, probably deemed me a little too far removed from sanity for her taste, and got in her car without further comment.

An asparagus knife has a V-shaped blade
that is perfect for digging up roots.

The first time I saw a wild carrot, a friend had taken me to the edge of a landscaped area of her yard, pulled up a scrawny white root, and asked me to smell it. "Doesn't that smell like a parsnip?" she asked. "Can I eat this?" It did smell delicious. But of course I cautioned her not to eat it until I'd done a little research. I went home and looked up wild parsnip (which is just the same as the cultivated kind you buy at the supermarket; this is not so for wild carrots). The plant looked nothing like the one we'd seen in her yard, so I told her she definitely shouldn't eat it until further notice.

I cannot say why it did not occur to me then to find out whether there was a wild carrot, but it didn't. It was winter when I happened upon a description of wild carrots and their close resemblance to poison hemlock. After looking through the photos and reading the description, I was sure we had found a wild carrot. My friend and I attend the same church, and she had mentioned seeing these plants all around the parking lot there, but I'd had to wait until the spring to go looking for them.

Cleaned and washed wild carrots.

So there I was, digging up these miniature white carrots. I consulted my book closely to make sure I understood the difference between wild carrots and poison hemlock. Both plants go by the common name "Queen Anne's Lace," but they are decidedly different plants: most importantly, one is tasty, and the other will kill you. But what I had was certainly a wild carrot: witness hairy stems (poison hemlock lacks hairs), grooved petioles (petioles of poison hemlock are round and hollow), lack of a purplish tint to the root, and a delicious carrot smell (poison hemlock smells only faintly of carrot, and the leaves smell bad). I had a positive ID!

Most of the carrots were no bigger than my pinky. It's not possible to peel them; there just wouldn't be anything left (trust me, I tried). A thorough cleaning is thus in order. And how did they taste? Well, if you expect a crisp, cultivated carrot, you'll be in for a disappointment. They were rather stringy, although they did definitely taste of carrot. They were also a little softer than the cultivated kind. I tried one raw and put the rest in the refrigerator in the hopes of finding enough elsewhere to warrant cooking them. My book reports that chopping them into small pieces and boiling them makes them much easier to eat.

The basal rosette of an evening primrose. Note that the midrib is
much lighter than the rest of the leaf.

The next day, I took the two older boys on a hunt for more wild carrots in a parking lot within walking distance of our house. We only found two, but we found a multitude of evening primrose roots. I'd seen the flower stalks growing there last summer and had tried the flower buds (a bit spicy and not my favorite thing, but they would probably be good in certain soups), so I knew it was a good place to look for the rosettes that mark where to dig for roots. Evening primrose is a biennial; the first year, it exists as a basal rosette (see photo), and the second year it shoots up a flower stalk and produces five-petaled yellow flowers. Both the growing stalk (before buds appear) and the flower buds are edible, although I'd only tried the latter.

Evening primrose root. Note the purple coloring
near the leaves.

The rosettes were everywhere around the edges of this parking lot, and we got a bag full without much trouble. We also spotted some of last year's Japanese knotweed stalks, of which we made note so we can return a little later this spring (see March 11 post). Last year we collected autumn berries there (yum!), and there are a bunch of sumac bushes and some milkweed as well, although we didn't collect any sumac from that location (and I haven't tried milkweed pods or shoots yet). I wonder what food we'll discover there next!

On the way home, we walked around the edge of an athletic field and found some blueberry bushes just starting to wake up, lots more evening primrose, and a couple of blooming trees I think might be cherry trees. I can't figure out what kind of cheery tree they are, though. I considered pin

As-yet-unidentified cherry-like tree.

cherry and sand cherry. I don't think the flower clusters looked like those of black cherry, and the trees were pretty small, which suggests sand cherry. The leaves were too small for me to tell what shape they will be or even whether the margins will be serrated or smooth. The flowers were about an inch in diameter, which is larger than my books say the flowers of either pin cherry or sand cherry should be, but the bark (which is dark brown and has horizontal lines, or lenticles, along its length) is suggestive of some type of cherry, and the flowers look like cherry blossoms. I'll have to keep an eye on these trees. (Postscript: when the fruit finally appeared, it was golden brown and speckled and did not look like any edible fruit I'm familiar with, so I still have no idea what kind of trees they are, but obviously they're part of the landscaping plan at the high school).

Blossoms of the mystery tree.

On our way home, we discovered a multitude of wild carrots growing at the side of the road, just a minute from our house. We only dug up a few because by now it was past time to be starting dinner, but now we know where to find more. Wild carrot shoots are reportedly better than the roots, so I look forward to gathering some later this spring.

At home, I scrubbed the carrot and evening primrose roots with a potato brush, picked off all the root hairs, and sliced the roots into quarter-inch chunks. I vowed to find larger specimens next time; scrubbing the little ones hardly seemed worth it. Although my guide book advised that raw evening primrose root is a bit spicy and itches the back of the throat, I tried it anyway. At first I thought, "This isn't spicy! This is pretty good, actually," and then I started to feel it at the back of my throat. Yep. A bit spicy and a bit itchy. So I roasted the carrots and evening primrose in a little olive oil, sprinkled some garam masala (an indian spice mix) over them, and squeezed a little fresh lemon juice on top.

The boys resting by some Japanese knotweed stalks
on the way home.

The result was ... still a little itchy and spicy. The carrots had promise (they were just a little overdone and dried out; they seemed to cook more quickly than the evening primrose), but evening primrose prepared this way is not something I'd try again. I might try boiling it next time (this is what my book recommends, and perhaps the water carries away the spiciness). If that doesn't work, then at least the boys and I had fun digging them up, and I can look forward to trying the growing shoots of both wild carrots and evening primrose a little later in the spring.