Flowers that look like white saucers on tall stalks are catching the eye of drivers on motorway embankments. They are wild carrots, whose flowerheads are densely woven masses of small white blossoms. In the middle of these white saucers can be seen a tiny red or purple spot, which in fact is the central flower. The taproot is long and thin, and our edible carrots have been developed from it. It smells like a carrot and is edible when it is young, but it soon gets too tough to eat. The lacy-looking flowerheads have given this plant the name of Queen Anne’s lace in the United States, where it is a widespread species introduced from the Old World, but in Britain Queen Anne’s lace is another name only for cow parsley. As the saucer turns to seed, its edge curls inwards, and it ends up looking like an untidy, mossy bird’s nest. The brown seeds have little spiny hooks in them, which catch in the fur of passing animals and so get distributed.

Derwent May is a guest on The Times’s Proms podcast today. Hear it online at timesonline.co.uk/proms