6,000 miles and So Many Friends Later

I have been back in Texas a week, trying to acclimate once again to a “cool day” being one that is only in the low 90’s.  Hard to accept after being in the truly cool weather of New England, but then, in time I will see that as “cool” too. Not just yet though.

Where to begin.  Clearly you don’t want ALL the details, for this is a nature blog, not really my life and times, but oh how good to be driving through nature that I know again.  The roads of New England, and really much of the East are lined with lace in August- Queen Anne’s lace, growing in thick waving lines along the side of the roads.  You wonder sometimes why one particular species seems to dominate a roadside like that.  Clearly there is something about them that thrives there.  Perhaps with the Queen Anne’s Lace it is the fact that it can produce several stalks and flowers even if mowed down, so bring on those highway mowers, it can take it.

My Stokes book on Wildflowers claims the name comes from a legend that Queen Anne challenged her ladies in waiting to make a lace as lovely as the flower for her wedding.  If anyone of them did, they didn’t get their names in print although the Queen did.  And the Latin name lets you know this is a wild carrot,  Daucus carota.   It is the wild precursor of the carrot they would later develop for our gardens.  However, this wild one is stringy and tough and takes hours to cook so stick with your supermarket variety.  They are so abundant in most places that pulling one up to scratch and sniff the root really is an acceptable thing to do.  Try it, it smells just like carrot.  As do the leaves, rub them between your finger and you will also get a carrot scent. 

If you don’t get a carrot scent, beware, for Poison Hemlock, of being used to kill Socrates fame, might be the plant you have.  It looks like a Queen Anne Lace on steroids reaching as high as 8’.  Its stalk has purple spots and is smooth, not hairy, like the Queen.  Not to be trifled with.  It grows abundantly here along the Guadalupe River.  I saw it in the spring and there is another difference, for the Queen’s Lace, appears later in the summer. 

Either way, it felt like a constant companion from Eastern TN through Maine and on the Cape and along the road through Canada.  Its distribution is supposedly throughout the US but I seemed to lose it in western TN and it certainly isn’t around here.  Or at least I haven’t seen it.

Interesting, that for all the adventures of this trip; broken down cars, my dog with a face full of porcupine quills, a cold front that attached to my bumper for the 4 day trip home with such heavy rain that I had to put on my flashers, I choose to write about Queen Anne’s Lace!  Guess that is the Nature blog part taking over.  I did intend to write from the road, but there really never was time, too many friends to see and laugh and talk with and then on the way home, that front and its accompanying “Severe Thunderstorms” would uncannily knock out the electricity each night as I settled in.  An amazing “Groundhog Day” feel to those last four day.  Perhaps I will follow this up with some other vignettes.  At least that will be my intention, providing a storm doesn’t hit!