Queen Anne’s lace is one of my favorite wildflowers. If some happens to land in my flower garden (and it usually does), I encourage it to grow.

Here’s some Queen Anne’s lace growing happily among the bee balm flowers in my garden last summer .

This plant is also known as wild carrot and it’s pretty closely related to the carrots we grow in our gardens. At this time of year, it’s just a cluster of feathery green leaves growing close to the ground, with a long white root buried in the soil. I removed a bunch of them from the rhubarb patch the other day (that’s not a place I want them to grow) and ended up with a good handful of wild carrots.

So I decided to eat them.

I washed and scraped them, then cut them in half and removed the woody core. It came out pretty easily.

I steamed them for a few minutes and ate them with butter and salt.

They tasted carroty, but not sweet like garden carrots. Not bad if you’re hungry, but I’d have to say that I enjoy the beauty of the flower a good deal more than the taste of the root.