As you near the sea, more and more wild carrot (Daucus carota) appears along the edges of the track and the margins of the fields until, in the light sandy soil just before the beach, you can find it in profusion. Though many of the plants have now finished flowering, there are still a few white umbels visible amongst the purple heads of knapweed and the remains of the red clover.
Now, its flowering season coming to an end, the wild carrot is perhaps at its most immediately recognisable as the unique seed head begins to develop. Unlike other umbellifers, which retain the delicate upcurve of the many branched flower heads as the seed-bearing fruits appear, the wild carrot goes its own way. The long outer stems of the umbel begin to curve upwards, gathering the other stems and their spiny fruits into a crowded mass within their enclosing arms. On some plants this distinctive fruiting head closes up almost completely; on others it forms a sort of concave dish so reminiscent of a birds' nest that in some parts of southern England it has given rise to that folk name.
But this is not the only transformation that the plant undergoes. Before the flowering head matures, the initial flowers appear in a compact mass. Often they are not even the white they will later become, but a deep pinkish red, and one of the most endearing features of this highly individual plant is that not quite every one of the tiny flowers makes this shift in colour. Wildflower identification books all refer to the frequency of occurrence of a single dark red flower to be found at the centre of the otherwise white umbel. I can still remember my delight when on seeing wild carrot for the first time I discovered that, however unlikely that fact might have seemed when I read of it, for this particular plant and for every other in that patch the description held true.
