Gathered a bunch of wild carrot seeds today. I didn’t know that they were a winter foraging option until reading about it in Steve Brill’s book Foraging New York. I’m looking forward to using them as a flavoring. The ones I gathered today have a nice carrot flavor with spicy and medicinal notes.

No post about wild carrot would be complete without a strong warning not to work with wild carrot until you are very familiar with wild carrot, poison hemlock, and any other toxic Apiaceae members that grow in the habitat you’re looking in. Wild carrot looks pretty distinctive in the winter, but I still checked each plant for the following characteristics before taking any seeds:

  • The umbels had transformed into an iconic bird’s nest look!
  • There were long bractcs underneath the bird’s nest.
  • The stems still had some hairs on them, especially near the base.
  • The stems were solid, not hollow.

This is not a complete identification checklist by any means, just the mental checklist that I used today.

If you’d like to become more familiar with these plants, here are some things have worked for me:

  • Learn from expert foragers.
  • Maintain your own identification checklists. I keep mine on flashcards so I can refresh my memory when I am bored. Keep refining them, adding to them, and validating them as you learn more.
  • Consult multiple guidebooks, and note how they describe wild carrot, poison hemlock, water hemlock, etc.
  • Every time you walk past wild carrot or poison hemlock, practice your identification skills! These plants are both super-common, so you can get lots of practice.
  • Spend time on inaturalist looking at observations, and adding identifications of your own.
  • Repeat all these steps throughout the year, so you can observe these plants in all stages.