It is Queen Anne’s Lace time in the North Carolina Piedmont and I am rejoicing. I would give a lot to grow Queen’s Anne Lace in my garden but I know that she is a free spirit and I respect that so I harvest her blooms from weedy lots. Every year I look forward to making at least one lovely, romantic, arrangement featuring Queen Anne’s Lace. Sometime I just put single stems of her in a vase; other times I combine her with whatever I have in the garden of the same ilk. Today it was the greenery of chartreuse hosta leaves overlaid with darker green pittosporum leaves, three sprays of the pink rose ‘Ballerina’, 3 large pink coneflowers, and an accent of dark pink bee balm. I may have been the only person that liked the combination, but I enjoyed making it. I will definitely make note of the place where I found it this year and hope that next year will bring another bountiful harvest. That is not to say that I would not welcome Queen Anne’s Lace into my garden; I do. I will shake the seed heads in the appropriate places and hope for the best. It would be a wonderful garden plant in my garden if it chooses to grow there but it probably won’t.
Type: Biennial.
Bloom: Tiny white flowers are borne in umbels up to 3” across May to October. Some flower heads have a single purple flower in the center.
Size: 24-48” H x 12” W.
Light: Full sun to partial shade.
Soil: Tolerant of many soil types and is common in roadsides and fields in many parts of the country.
Fertilizer: An organic mulch will provide all that is needed.
Hardiness: Zones 3-9.
Care: In some areas it may become invasive and must be removed by digging out the tap root and collecting seed heads before they ripen.
Pests and Diseases: None of importance.
Bird's nest seed pod
Propagation: Collect seed when seed heads (called bird’s nests) turn brown.
Companion plants: Queen Anne’s Lace is a wild flower and so can be nicely combined with other such plants like grasses, black eyed Susan, butterfly weed, golden rod, coneflower, thistle, and common mullein.
Comments: Caterpillars of the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly eat its leaves and bees and other insects use its nectar.
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I love Queen Anne’s lace and am happy to have her given her due in a post of her own. Your bouquet combination sounds excellent, and you’ve given a lot of great cultural info.
I will just point out that, though QAL is wild, it’s certainly not native; some people may want to make that distinction. And that little purple heart? I was told that it’s in every QAL flower, and every time I’ve looked it has been. Is your experience different?
You are so right about QAL not being native and thanks for making the distinction between native and wild. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes it as “Eurasian in origin….almost cosomopolitan in range.” It was named for a queen of England, but there is disagree as to which one. Some say it was Anne (1574 – 1619), the first Stuart Queen Anne, who was brought over from Denmark at age 14 to be a Queen to King James of Scotland. Others claim it was Anne (1665 – 1714), the daughter of William and Mary, and the last monarch in the Stuart line. Some flowers lack the center dark flower; I just checked my bouquet and it contains flowers with and without it. The literature on QAL confirms that observation. Perhaps it is a regional variation.
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