Many people say they see angels when walking the mountains. Maybe they’re spirits of the hills or spiritual beings of light bringing messages and warnings of omens both ill and good. Or maybe they saw an overabundance of bees, beetles and butterflies dancing not on the head of a pin, but on the flowerhead of the filmy angelica (Angelica triquinata).
A member of the carrot family of plants (Apiaceae), this large and showy species only grows in the higher elevations of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains and is therefore referred to as an Appalachian endemic plant. The word endemic means “found in a relatively small or limited geographic area.”
The carrot family is among the largest and most studied plant families, with members that are edible and delicious like carrots found in stores (Daucus carota subs. sativa): Queen-Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) which is actually the wild parent of cultivated carrots: and many kitchen herbs like parsley (Petroselinum crispum) and fennel (Foeniculum vulgare).
The carrot family also contains toxic and poisonous plants as well, from the photo-reactive sap of members like cow-parsnip that can raise painful blisters on your skin, to water hemlock, the most poisonous plant in North America, that if consumed, can rapidly shut your liver down. Foragers of wild carrot and other carrot family plants have to be careful and make doubly or triply sure of their identification by checking plants in the field and at home before preparing into food or medicine.
The filmy angelica of the mountaintops is a beautiful and interesting wildflower useful and edible as food and medicine. The seeds have an anise-like flavor and can help settle your stomach like chewing on fennel seeds. Again, you need to be very careful to make sure your identification of carrot family species before consuming them. This is not a good plant family for beginning foragers or wildcrafters.
People are not the only foragers who visit the filmy angelica on the mountains. The nectar of Angelica triquinata is highly sought out by bumblebees and other larger native bees. When the plant is blooming, its umbel arrangement of clusters of tiny pale-green, whitish and sometimes pinkish flowers attract bees like a honky-tonk on a Saturday night.
The nectar of filmy angelica is actually an intoxicant to the bees and possibly the other pollinating insects who drink it. When blooming, the large flowerheads fill with native bees cavorting and carousing. These bees will drink their fill and get stumbly drunk on the nectar, often choosing wisely to spend the night on the flower instead of flying home and risking a FWI (Flying While Intoxicated). Sometimes they’ll even pass out and fall off the flower, laying at its base in a drunken stupor. I’m not here to judge — I mean, we’ve all got that uncle, right? These drunk bees will wake and fly right back to the bar and begin drinking again. It’s a wonder they ever find their way home.
These dive bar-esque flowers develop into one of the most beautiful displays of seedheads once pollinated. Growing larger by the day as they ripen, the seedheads have an intricate architecture. Individual seeds are striped with two lateral wings on either side that can help them float away from the parent plant once viable. I have so many photos of the different developing stages of seed ripening that it made choosing one for this article difficult.
I encourage you to get up in elevation, maybe along the Blue Ridge Parkway, as this summer wanes into fall, and look for the large leaves, flowers and seedheads of filmy angelica. But don’t be like the bees — stay sober while searching. Those roads are windy and treacherous. Even your guardian angels might have a hard time keeping up with you.
(The Joyful Botanist leads weekly wildflower walks most Fridays and offers consultations and private group tours through Bigelow’s Botanical Excursions. bigelownc@gmail.com.)