Queen Anne’s Lace–#AtoZChallenge

As a child, I was fascinated by this flower–partly because of the name–such a romantic name for a flower that grows wild in the fields.  And it really is lacy.

I found 2 different stories for why it’s called Queen Anne’s Lace.  One is that it’s named after Jesus’s grandmother and Mary’s mother, Saint Anne, the patron saint of lacemakers and sometimes called the Queen of Heaven.  The other one is that Queen Anne, the wife of King James I, was challenged by her friends to create lace as beautiful as a flower. While making the lace, she pricked her finger, and it’s said that the purple-red flower in the center of Queen Anne’s Lace represents a droplet of her blood. (thanks, teleflora)

It’s also called Wild Carrot (it’s a wild relative of the cultivated carrot), Bishop’s Lace or Bird’s Nest.

in the language of flowers, it represents sanctuary–something we can all use.

Here is a poem I found here about Queen Anne’s Lace.

Queen-Anne’s-Lace

Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.