The carrots in my garden did odd things this year.

I had already realized from looking at second year carrots in the past that they are a biennial. Biennial is an interesting pattern in itself. The first year the carrot only grows some leaves above the ground, while it stores food in a large underground root. The carrots can be dug up and used from late summer all through winter if the ground is not too hard. In the spring of the second year, it uses the food stored in the root to grow a tall stalk with the flowers and seeds on top. The root soon becomes woody and doesn't taste good any more. (Thistles are another biennial with edible roots.)

Anyway, I planted carrots in my garden this year, and quite a few of them went to seed, which is odd, since it is only the first year. I let them grow, and in the fall I pulled one of the ones which had gone to seed, to verify the species with a botanical key. Carrots are from the Umbeliferae family, and the one I chose had some umbels with flowers and some in seed. The keying was a bit difficult, because I decided the seeds were hairy rather than bristly, but I eventually figured that out. Another thing I learned while doing the keying is that both levels of the umbel have bracts at the base, which is not very common in the family. The umbels start out flat or convex in flower, but become very concave like a bird's nest as the seed develope.

One pattern I noticed which was not in the keys, was that there was a single tiny red flower at the center of the umbel (the other tiny flowers are white), which persists even when the seeds have developed. Eventually I found this characteristic mentioned on an internet page. It is a unique characteristic of the carrot genus (Daucus), and is where the wild carrots gets it's name of "Queen Anne's Lace". The white flowers of the umbel resemble lace, and the red flower represents a drop of blood because Queen Anne pricked herself which making the lace.

The roots of the ones which had gone to seed were quite small, because they had not taken the year to build up a large root. They were also white instead of orange. In fact most of the carrots I pulled were white! Some were light orange, and only a few were "normal" orange color. Some more internet research revealed that orange carrots were first bred only 400 years ago in Holland; before that, most carrots were white (like mine). People have also bred yellow, red, and purple carrots.

I tasted the various colors of carrots. The orange ones tasted best, being sweeter and crisper. The white and light orange ones were tougher (a bit more fibrous, but not quite woody). They did not taste quite as good either.

My best guess as to why all this happened is that it is because they were old seeds. Next year I will be sure to use fresh carrot seeds, instead of ones that have been on the shelf for a couple years.