Carrot
Carrot
Food Plant
A plant grown for its sweet orange taproot — a store of food for winter — whose wild form is a common native British wildflower.
💡 Fun Facts
- We eat the carrot's swollen orange taproot, where the plant stores sugar for the winter.
- In its second year it sends up a tall, flat-topped cluster of tiny white flowers.
- Wild carrot grows all over Britain; the orange one we eat was bred later — the first carrots were purple, white and yellow.
📅 Through the Year
- Flowering:June to August
- Fruiting:August to September
Name Story
Daucus carota
means “the carrot — the carrot”
What does its name mean?
- Daucus — carrotGreek daukos — an old name for carrot-like plants
- carota — carrotLatin, from Greek karōton ‘carrot’
This is a name that says the same thing twice, in two languages: one word is an old Greek name for carrot-like plants, and the other is simply ‘carrot’. Both point to the long, tapering, horn-shaped root we pull up and eat.