My Teacher: Queen Anne's Lace

My first lesson from Southern Italy was about fertility and belonging.

Being in Italy opened up a portal for the conversation I've been needing to have with the plants we know as “European” plants. Somewhat like the stories of my family line, details have been dropped, forgotten or changed.

A plant that can tell this story is Queen Anne's Lace, or Wild Carrot, Daucus carota. 

Ancient traditional knowledge and herbalists know that consuming the seed of this plant at the correct intervals and dosage can make the walls of the uterus “slippery” and thus prevent the implantation of a zygote (when a sperm meets an egg in a uterus or other fertile environment) and pregnancy.

This plant, an ancestor of your garden-variety carrot, grows along the roadsides all along the Pacific Coast, and I’m sure many other places. (I’m sure you’ve seen it!) 

They have a white composite flower (a flat-ish white bloom that is made up of many other smaller flowers) and characteristically one dark red dot in the middle. Sometimes young flowers have a pinkish ring around the outer edge and it famously dries up into a seed head that looks like a hummingbird’s nest. Easily mis-identified as some of the most poisonous plants in the world, you know you’re dealing with Queen Anne because “Queen Anne has hairy legs” ~ the stalk is covered in tiny hairs.

At 19 I thought I was so clever, that I had found my own solution to the age-old problem of pregnancy! I wandered around the alleys of my college town (quite ignorant to the effects and proximity of car pollutants), and I harvested the dry seed there in the fall. However last month when I re-met the plant in Southern Italy, the story of my DIY remedy profoundly shifted in my mind. 

What I realized was that I was not the first uterus-having person to have used this plant in my family line. I was not as clever as I had thought. I wondered, how long had my ancestors relied on the plant for the same, or other purposes? Had I, in some trippy DNA sort-of-way in fact recognized the plant? Clearly an ancient remedy by many, many, many of my ancestors to maintain agency over their bodies and lives.

Queen Anne's Lace (QAL), along with many of the plants that were intentionally or unintentionally brought to the "Americas," from "Europe," are often spoken about in a pejorative way here on Turtle Island (North America). We often speak about what plants are native or "good," and what plants are introduced or invasive, and thus "bad."

There’s a dichotomy of good and bad that gets superimposed on the flora. Which has nothing to do with them! I do not believe they have colonial agendas, and

for important ecological conservation reasons, and due to the history of native species getting wiped out after the introduction of other plants to North America, I’m here for the conversation about how we are responsible guests and stewards of the land that we live on.

What I realized through my meetings with Queen Anne’s Lace in Italy was that once the context and connotation of a plant being "invasive" was removed,

the conversations I was able to have with the plants from Europe while I was in Europe was a more direct, less judgmental conversation. 

A veil had been lifted. Deep feelings arose and clarity parted like biblical clouds in my mind when I was finally able to remove this long-standing judgment towards European plants. 

Standing in front of QAL, in southern Italy, I could see with my own two eyes (and think in my head and feel in my heart) a message from the plant about love. A message about how long my DNA and the DNA of QAL have been in a dance of reciprocity. And that, the wisdom of this divine plant is something that I share with my well-ancestors who I never got to meet but are guiding me on my path. 😭 

Did my well-ancestors bring me to Calabria to re-introduce me to QAL, or did QAL bring me to Calabria to re-introduce me to my well-ancestors? Is this the same question twice?

Not only is Queen Anne's Lace my direct plancestor, this plant-being has directly shaped my family line; choosing which two-legged would or who-would-not be my ancestor. This plant has allowed countless uterus-havers to have agency and choice for generations. 🤯

So that’s how the portal opened.

It’s kinda like therapy; non-judgmental communication with another being.

Additionally, one of the most important things I learned while traveling in Sicily and Calabria is that no one really knows what is a native plant there. Sure, there are some plants that we know immigrated there, famously the tomato, peppers and eggplant. And we can trace plants like citrus or nigella from places along trade routes worldwide.

Yet coming from a culture that is so focused on native vs. introduced ecology, I found the idea of native=? fascinating! Queen Anne’s Lace, Saint John’s Wort, Burdock, Mullein and Milk Thistle, sure they are all European but the people in Europe and the surrounding areas moved around, and colonized each other again and again, the deets get real fuzzy real fast.

I took careful note of when and where the plants I use in my herbal apothecary showed up along my travels. I wondered, how exactly did my Calabrian ancestors use these plants? By who and when did they arrive in southern Italy? How and for what reason did they travel again to Turtle Island? How can they be a polite guest on Turtle Island?

As a person who is called to work deeply with plants, they speak to me. I heard the plants I met along my journey asking me to deepen the conversation and relationship with them. 

I'm still sorting out what that will look like, how I might do it, and how to reckon with the way they have been so disruptive here in California. 

Here’s what I know so far: I meditate with the plant energies and sit with these complexities in conversation. I give thanks for the presence and teachings of the plancetors. I make altars, tinctures and bouquets and perform ancient Italian solstice rituals.

This work is never done. ✨🌿

Note

This essay is Part 1 of a series about the teachings of plants in Southern Italy that I received during an ancestral pilgrimage to Sicily and Calabria in May and June 2024.

To receive future plant teaching shares, and to receive updates about my work, please subscribe to Whale Mail, which comes out almost every Whale Wednesday.

Special thanks to Alana, Andrew, Jaime, Kara, Nico, Vanessa and Vin for helping me sort this all out.