# Wild carrot, seed of (Daucus carota)

**Dauco**

**Known today as.** Seed of *Daucus carota*, Queen Anne’s lace.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

In the melancholic purge, in the gentle vomitories, and in the stuffing of the cockerel (chs. 4–6).

## What does modern science say?

Reported to be diuretic and carminative, as the old pharmacy also held; not a purgative.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **carotol**: a sesquiterpene alcohol of the seed oil
- **daucol**: 
- **alpha-pinene**: 
- **falcarinol**: a polyacetylene

**Mechanism.** A carminative and mild diuretic seed of the fennel family, which is why it stood in the purges and the cockerel; its folk use as a morning-after contraceptive rests on an unconfirmed animal study, and the plant must not be confused with hemlock, whose smooth stem and purple spots are the difference.

**Dose.** Safe as a spice; the leaf’s furanocoumarins photosensitise.

**Standing.** No monograph; the cultivated carrot is the food.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its modern name, Queen Anne’s lace, carries its own legend: the single dark purple or red floret at the heart of the white flower is said to be a drop of blood, shed when a Queen Anne, variously Anne of Great Britain, Anne of Denmark, or even Anne Boleyn, pricked her finger trying to make lace as fine as the flower.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Of the daucus he says Petronius Diodotus distinguished four kinds, “the varieties being in reality but two”: the most esteemed of Crete, resembling fennel with whiter, hairier leaves and a root that “has a remarkably pleasant taste and smell”; the seed “white, acrid, hot, and odoriferous,” that of the second kind stronger and to be used more sparingly; quadrupeds will not touch it “except indeed, after abortion”; the seed is the part used, save for the Cretan, whose root is “particularly useful for the stings of serpents”; it is also “curative of head-ache,” and a wine was made of it.

## Sources

- Plant-Lore, “Queen Anne’s Lace.”
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 25.64, 25.84, 14.19, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Jansen, G. C., and Wohlmuth, H. (2014). “Carrot seed for contraception: a review.” *Australian Journal of Herbal Medicine* 26.

---

*Wild carrot, seed of.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/wild-carrot-seed-of

Historical description, not medical advice.