Daucus carota, Wild Carrot
Artist: Sarah Red-Laird
Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 44
Location: Trisaetum’s Coast Range Vineyard, Oregon
Flower: Daucus carota, Wild Carrot
Materials: Cyanotype, barnwood
Field Season: 2022
Composed: 2023
Trisaetum Winery and BGO have been collaborating through the “Bee Friendly Vineyards” program since 2019. This is a vintner and melittologist-driven collaboration led by Trisaetum’s James Frey and BGO’s Sarah Red-Laird.
Together they are letting data collected from the vineyard’s soil, grapes, bees, flowers, and microbiology inform management decisions. They believe that a vineyard can concurrently produce stellar fruit and create an ecological refugia for some of our most important (and imperiled) pollinators – the bees.
Our collaboration has resulted in decreasing chemical inputs and increasing wildflowers through planting seeds along fencerows and headlands and reducing, or eliminating, mowing and tillage in and around the vineyards.
Because grapes are self-pollinating, vineyard managers often don’t consider creating pollinator-friendly landscapes. However, bees have an important and undervalued role outside of cash crop pollination services. They are also essential in building soil health, though ensuring the reproduction of plants that fix nitrogen naturally and support healthy mycorrhiza communities, essential in grapevine production.
Bees are an indicator species of a healthy vineyard and an in-tact environment. Ecologically speaking, a healthy community of bees is an indication of the life-cycle loop coming back together.
Learn more about the winery here, and make sure to visit for a tasting on your next trip to Oregon’s Willamette Valley wine country!
Daucus carota, whose common names you might recognize - wild carrot or Queen Anne's lace, is a common wildflower in the Willamette Valley. You have seen it along roadways, in ditches, fields, and edges of lawns, and vineyards.
The flowers are all white, with one dark purple bloom in the middle. The reason for this dark spot has been debated since Charles Darwin speculated that they are a vestigial trait. It has been suggested that they have the adaptive function of mimicking insects, thus either discouraging herbivory, or attracting pollinators by indicating the presence of food or opportunities for mating (according to the Journal of Natural History).
The common name, Queen Anne’s lace came from the flower’s resemblance to lace and the red flower in the center is said to represent a droplet of blood where Queen Anne pricked herself with a needle when she was making the lace.
Though this plant can be mildly toxic to horses, it is for the most part harmless. Livestock and other pasture animals tend to avoid it, as long as there is plenty else to eat.
If you have this plant on your property – please don’t spray it! The flower plays host to sweat bees, blood bees, honey bees, small carpenter bees, and yellow-faced bees.