Madeira carrot

Daucus decipiens

Family · Apiaceae · Poisonous

Read this before the sheet

This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.

Madeira carrot (Daucus decipiens) — naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 · curtisantonynixon, CC BY 4.0

The wild carrot of Madeiran cliffs, which makes a woody stem and a large white umbel. It is an umbellifer, and that alone is reason not to touch it with any intention of gathering.

Where it grows

Walls and rocks · Dunes and sand · Scrubland

Also known as

Madeiran wild carrot

In flower

How to tell it

A sturdy plant with a woody base, to a metre and a half. Leaves divided several times into fine, slightly fleshy segments, pale green. Large flat umbels of white flowers, with divided bracts beneath, as in nearly every wild carrot. Fruits covered in hooked spines. Range: endemic to Madeira.

What it is confused with

Hemlock

Conium maculatum

Confusion that kills

Both are large white-flowered umbellifers. Hemlock has a smooth stem with purple blotches and smells of mouse urine when crushed; Madeira carrot has a woody base, slightly fleshy leaves and a carrot smell. When in doubt, neither is gathered.

Open sheet →

What it is for

None to recommend. The whole family's rule applies and does not change because the plant is endemic and pretty: a white-flowered umbellifer picked by mistake may be hemlock, and the consequences have no remedy. You look at it and photograph it.

Sources

Flora-On