Wild carrot, Daucus carota L., [DAUCA, carotte sauvage, Bird's-nest, Queen Anne's-Lace, carotte] Biennial or, occasionally, annual and sometimes a short-lived perennial, reproducing by seed. Seedlings emerge during spring and early summer, with 2 long, narrow, thin cotyledons (seed leaves); first true leaf is compound with 3 main divisions; later leaves compound with many divisions; first-year plant usually stemless, with a deeply penetrating, tough taproot and a rosette of stalked, very finely dissected (lacy), hairy leaves virtually identical in appearance and smell to leaves of the cultivated carrot; bases of leafstalks broad and flat; stem produced in the second year on biennial plants, erect, to 1 m (40 in.) tall, branching, grooved, rough-hairy or bristly; stem leaves similar to basal leaves but smaller and on shorter stalks; base of leafstalk broadened and more or less circling the stem at each node; flowers white in compound umbels (large umbels made up of many smaller umbels) at tips of stem and; a whorl of several 3-to 5-branched bracts at the base of each compound umbel; most flowers white or occasionally pinkish, but the single flower arising from the centre of the compound umbel is often dark purple; after flowering the umbel closes, forming what is commonly called a 'bird's nest"; fruits ("seeds") greyish to brownish with several rows of spines by which they cling to clothing and animal fir. Flowers from June to September. Stems, leaves and root have the familiar carrot odour.

Wild carrot occurs throughout most of Ontario in old pastures, waste places, roadsides, meadows and occasionally as a weed in gardens and flower borders. The cultivated carrot was developed from Wild carrot, which has a coarse, woody, fibrous, unpalatable taproot, by selecting strains having soft juicy edible roots.

It is distinguished by its finely divided leaves, its erect, hairy stem, its white to pinkish compound umbels surrounded at their bases bv whorls of slender 3- to 5-branched bracts, its bird's-nest cluster of fruits and its typical carrot odour, and a coarse, fibrous, unpalatable root.

(Source: Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Publication 505, Ontario Weeds)