WILD CARROT
Daucus carota
COMMON NAMES: Bird’s nest, Queen Anne’s lace, devil’s plague.
FEATURES: Daucus, from the Greek daukos or daukon—a kind of carrot or parsnip—a genus of about
sixty species of annual, biennial, or perennial herbs mainly of Mediterranean and African distribution,
belonging to the parsley family (Umbelliferae). The biennial wild carrot is an herb naturalized in
America, found growing in old meadows and pastures.
The fleshy root is tapered, yellowish white, sweetish, and faintly aromatic. Its erect, branching, bristly-
hairy stem is usually 1–5 feet high. The leaves are basal or alternate and pinnately compound. The
flowers are usually white or roseate to purplish and arranged in flat-topped compound umbels with a
central flower that is usually dark red or deep purple; blooms in June or July. The seeds are of a dull
brown color, flat on one side and convex on the other. The wild carrot cannot be transplanted to gardens
to produce an edible product. It taints milk with a bitter flavor if cattle eat too much of it, although it is not
poisonous.
MEDICINAL PART: The whole plant.
SOLVENT: Water.
BODILY INFLUENCE: Diuretic, deobstruent, stimulant.
USES: Culpeper comments “Wild Carrot belongs to Mercury, and therefore breaketh wind, and removeth
stitches in the sides, provoketh urine and women’s courses, and helpeth to break and expel the stones.”
Wild carrot blossoms are used as a tea and are effective as a remedy for dropsy when all other treatment
fails. The root and seeds are often ground and used for colic, liver, kidney and bladder, painful urination,
to increase the menstrual flow, and in expelling worms from the bowels. Some physicians believe that the
bruised seeds steeped (not boiled) are more effective in kidney diseases, dropsy, inflammation of the
bladder, and in gravel. You will find that improvement in some of the above conditions will relieve
rheumatic pain.