Plants that look like queen anne’s lace of the Apiaceae family share a striking resemblance and are thus difficult to distinguish. These beautiful plants make a lovely addition to any place if specific conditions and needs are fulfilled.
This article will explore these plants, their differences, how they like their environment, and what they need to thrive. Keep reading to find out.
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List of Queen Anne Lace’s Look-alikes
Queen Anne’s lace or daucus carota belongs to the family Apiaceae. It is a typical sight in dry fields, ditches by the side of the road, and open spaces. There are numerous theories about how this common name came to be, including the flower’s likeness to lace.
Queen Anne’s lace can reach a height of 1 m and blooms typically from May to October. The plant and its tap root both smell like carrots. Many plants resemble queen anne’s lace, some of which are also poisonous. Please keep reading to explore more about them.
1. Water Hemlock
The most severely poisonous plant that grows in North America is water hemlock . Only a minimal amount is required for humans or livestock to get poisoned by the plant’s deadly chemical. Cicutoxin found in the plant is a dangerous convulsant that acts directly on the central nervous system.
The water hemlock bears small, white flowers in bunches that resemble umbrellas. It belongs to the family of carrot perennials and thrives in streams, pastures, and moist seepage zones of meadows.
Water hemlock shares a striking resemblance with queen anne’s lace, but the only difference is that the former’s stem is covered with tiny hairs up the stem.
At the same time, poison hemlock bears a smooth stem with purple streaks but lacks dots. Both species’ white flowers bloom in an umbrella-like arrangement (called an umbel).
– Growing Season
The ideal growing season of this plant is in spring. Water hemlock blooms in higher elevations in June or July.
– Specific Needs
This plant prefers moist, fertile soils found along streams, irrigation canals, and the edges of bodies of water. It is most prevalent in deep, clay or clay soils.
2. Wild Parsnip
Wild parsnip, a biennial/perennial herb, is prevalent in the southern Canada region and the northern United States.
In reality, wild parsnip belongs to the Apiaceae (or Umbelliferae) family, which also contains carrots, celery, parsley, parsnip, angelica, and queen anne’s lace, the majority of which are aromatic plants with hollow stems. It resembles cultivated parsnips in appearance and scent.
Queen Anne’s lace and wild parsnip resemble the carrot family. Also, both have circular clusters of tiny flowers that are generally flat on top.
– Growing Season
The ideal growing season is summer. Each wild parsnip plant bears hundreds of tiny yellow flowers from mid-June until mid-July. After producing seeds, plants die, but the dead stalk lasts the winter.
– Specific Needs
It can live in various environmental conditions, including wet meadows and dry soil. Rich, calcareous, alkaline, moist soils are optimal for growing it. It frequently grows along roadway edges, in pastures, in deserted fields, or anywhere else where the soil has been disturbed, and the native vegetation has not yet had a chance to take root properly.
3. Poison Hemlock
Poison hemlock, a carrot family member, is a common toxic biennial plant found along roadsides, in fields, and in other open, sunny regions. Any portion of this plant, consumed in any quantity, can be fatal to humans, animals, and other creatures.
Poison hemlock’s stems are hollow, non-hairy, reddish or purple-stained and marked with dots and stripes. When crushed, the leaves have a distinct musty smell and are bright green, fern-like, finely split, and serrated on the margins. The plant is similar to anne’s lace as both species’ white flowers bloom in umbels shaped like umbrellas.
– Growing Season
Poison hemlock is a biennial plant that grows from seeds and bears first-year leaves of a basal rosette. After overwintering, in late April or early May, it bolts into an upright, branching plant that often bears an umbel of striking white flowers in June and July.
– Specific Needs
It flourishes in damp soils with lots of nitrogen. It thrives along fences, roadsides, ditches, and buildings.
4. Giant Hogweed
Giant hogweed is typically a perennial herb which belongs to the carrot family which has a long lifespan, but once it blooms and produces fruit, it passes away. This plant is commonly known as an ornamental due to its enormous size and attractive appearance. Its ability to reach a height of 15 feet allows it to be differentiated from numerous species that resemble it.
The plant shares a striking resemblance with the main plant, but the only difference is that the queen anne’s lace is a smaller, flowering plant that only reaches a height of 1-4 feet, and giant hogweed is frequently taller than a person.
– Specific Needs
Giant hogweed flourishes in moist regions near streams and rivers, on waste ground, next to houses, in open spaces, and alongside highways and railways. It favors damp soil and quickly takes over the banks of streams and ravines. Zone 3 is the most challenging zone for this plant, and it prefers full sun and well-drained soil.
– Growing Season
This plant blooms in summer in June and July. It can stretch to four years for giant hogweed to flower, after which the entire plant dies. The flowers are self-pollinating and insect-pollinated.
5. Yarrow
Yarrow, known by its botanical name Achillea millefolium, is a native North American plant that attracts pollinators and requires little maintenance, making it ideal for borders, ground covers, and open meadows. This plant is an aromatic herb that offers various healing properties. Yarrow is resistant to pests and drought, attracts butterflies, and is great for cutting and drying.
Although this plant and queen anne’s lace look similar, they are botanically quite different. They belong to different families and have different flowering structures.
Yarrow belongs to the Asteraceae family and bears clusters of variously colored flowers at the tips of its shoots. Anne’s lace plant is native to the carrot family and bears white flowers in umbels at the tips of shoots.
– Growing Season
Yarrow plants bloom from early spring to late fall
and grow 1 to 3 feet tall. Plant yarrow from tip cuttings in the spring or early summer.Specific Needs
Yarrow grows curvy in partial sun or shade. Yarrow thrives in well-drained soil. It prefers hot, dry conditions and will not grow in constantly wet soil. Although loamy soil is preferred, yarrow can also be grown in clay soil as long as it is not constantly saturated with water.
6. Ammi Majus
The plant, commonly known as bishop’s flower, is a pleasing annual with dainty white flowers that seem like lacework above finely cut green foliage. The blooms are popular among flower arrangers because they make a great, long-lasting addition to bouquets and work well among various plants in a mixed herbaceous border.
Ammi majus attracts bees, beneficial insects, and other pollinators. It has flowers that are high in nectar and pollen. The flowers of these plants resemble lace flowers, but the ammi flowers are completely white, with no dark central dot. Ammi is also less weedy and more delicate.
– Specific Needs
Ammi majus prefers well-drained soil and full sun to partial shade. Allow seeds to develop for saving and sowing the following year, but leave some for goldfinches, who will come to your garden in winter to feast on them.
– Growing Season
Ammi Majus can be planted in the autumn for a head start or in the spring for summer flowers. Because this plant is an annual, you must sow it every year, though it does self-sow easily.
7. Fool’s Parsley
Fool’s parsley, also known by its botanical name Aethusa cynapium, native to Europe, western Asia, and the Pacific Northwest, is a blooming annual (rarely biennial) herb. This plant flourishes in fields, landfills, and sunny, damp environments.
The root is 3 to 6 inches long and shaped like a radish. This carrot species does not appear to spread as quickly as some other family members since it is not frequently encountered.
It is a herb; thus, the sections of plants that grow above the earth are sometimes used to create medicines. Fool’s parsley is so named because it resembles fresh garden parsley so much. Avoid confusing the two since fool’s parsley might have detrimental consequences. The plant spreads throughout waysides, dirt mounds, wasteland, gardens, flowerbeds, and vegetable patches.
The most obvious characteristics of fool’s parsley are its hairless leaves, sheaths, and stems, as well as the three to four long, drooping, linear bracts at the base of a umbellet, the absence of bracts on the main umbels, and the hairless, ribbed fruits.
– Growing Season
The typically annual fool’s parsley begins to bloom in June and lasts through the end of the growing season. As a winter landmark, the dead plant with its fruits remains upright for a considerable amount of time. When fool’s parsley grows as a biennial plant, which happens infrequently, it overwinters as a leaf rosette.
– Specific Needs
Like most herbs, parsley thrives in a sunny location with direct light for six to eight hours per day. It can stand a little bit of light shade. After the threat of spring, frosts have gone, directly put seeds in the area where you will grow the plants. With an eighth inch of dirt, encircle the seeds.
8.Garden Carrot
The carrot plant native to Central Asia, belonging to the Apiaceae family, is cultivated for its consumable root. This plant produces a rosette of 8–12 leaves and a fleshy, conical taproot, respectively, above and below ground. The shrub produces small (2 mm) white, red, or purple blooms.
The plant is also known as the wild carrot plant and is annual or biennial. It is thought that the plant was first domesticated in Europe or the Western Mediterranean. The feathery Queen Anne’s lace blossom and its edible roots, which resemble cultivated carrots, may appeal to home gardeners.
– Growing Season
Carrot seeds can be grown from early spring to the end of August and can be harvested nearly always. In the months of April through July, most cultivars are sown outside. Depending on the type, carrots should be available for harvest 60 to 80 days after seeding.
– Specific Needs
Carrots are a cool-season vegetable that favors fertile, deep, well-drained soils and sunny settings. Before planting, add a full fertilizer and a lot of organic matter to the area. Sow seeds 14 to 2 inches deep. Carrot seedlings rows’ must be spaced 12 to 18 inches apart.
Conclusion
Queen Anne’s lace are beautiful wildflowers that add a touch of elegance to whichever place they are grown, ranging from sideways to pathways and even wasteland.
As discussed above, you will find various other look-alikes that resemble the lace plant. These plants resemble each other in appearance, and most of them prefer the same growing conditions.
However, you are now better able to distinguish between all these plants.
- Water and poison hemlock is a severely poisonous plant, so ensure you and your pets are safe around it.
- Wild parsnip and giant hogweed belong to the carrot family, and both enjoy wet soil.
- The garden carrot is an edible plant that can be grown in a home garden.
- Ammi Majus is a beautiful flower that you can use to create aesthetic bouquets.
After discovering all these plants that look like queen anne’s lace, can you differentiate them?
References
- https://www.reconnectwithnature.org/news
- https://www.wildflower.org/
