A vegetable with royal heritage

Tag: ad carrot

I simply love to grow a few carrot roots here and there amongst our spring flowers, perennials and shrubs. Their feathery tops add a delicate feel to the borders and the roots are most satisfying when harvested for the table. This vivid-orange, fleshy root vegetable is very different from its wild ancestor, which in contrast, is a tough, scraggy rooted plant with a wishy-washy-flesh dressed in a purple to white, yellow, red, greenish-yellow, or even a black skin and unfortunately has a bitter taste. The wild carrot, Daucus carota, belongs to the family Umbelliferae. In its natural state it is found growing in pastures and along roadsides and where soils are light and sandy it can expeditiously become a weed.

It is growing in our garden from a packet of wildflower seeds and is known as "Queen Anne's lace". It has long been used for its contraceptive properties.

The flowers and foliage of 'Queen Anne's lace' are so picturesque that during the reign of James 1 (1556-1625) King of England (James V1 of Scotland) ladies adorned their clothes and hats with them together with fruit, flowers and feathers and other items of nature's beautiful gifts.

The domestic carrot we grow today has a long, rich history and is reputed to have inherent nourishing properties.

Voltaire (1694-1778) said that "the art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease"!

Carrots hold many medicinal attributes, they are said to cleanse the intestines and to be a natural diuretic, anti-diarrhoeal, re-mineralising and a general tonic and anti-anaemic.

The carrot is abundant in alkaline components which purify and revitalise the blood. Carrots nourish the system and aid in the maintenance of acid-alkaline balance of the body.

Fossil pollen from the Eocene era (55 to 34 million years ago) has been identified as belonging to the Apiaceae family (the carrot family).