Chocolate Laceflower

Chocolate laceflower is a selection of wild carrot (Queen Anne's lace) with the same flat-topped umbel flower heads but in rich chocolate-brown and burgundy rather than white, one of the most useful fillers available to the cutting garden. The flowers add both texture and a deep, warm tone to summer arrangements that white laceflower cannot provide. It is easy, direct-sown, and self-seeds readily.

Direct sow in early spring as soon as the soil can be worked; it germinates in cool soil. Cut stems when about three-quarters of the florets in the umbel are open; the flowers continue to develop and the head holds for 7 to 10 days. The stems develop a mild carrot scent when cut.

It grows 18 to 30 inches in full sun and average to poor soil, and it is a biennial, so plants sown in late summer overwinter as rosettes and flower earlier and taller the next year. Hoverflies, tiny wasps and other beneficial insects work the open umbels. Note that Daucus carota is listed as a noxious weed in some states; deadhead what you do not want to seed, and check local rules before letting it naturalise.