A study of mineral nutritional effects on carrots.

The carrot (Daucus carota, Linn.) is a native of Europe, Asia and Northern Africa and possibly North and South America. Authors seem to disagree as to the place where the horticultural improvement of the species began. Bailey (1944) attributes it to Holland while Coulter (1941) says that the transition of the wild carrot to the garden form took place in France. Though there are some rather hazy indications that a form of carrot may have been known to man in remote antiquity, for practical purposes the garden type is to be regarded as one of the comparatively later developed species dating from approximately the second century B.C. It is difficult to be precise about the carrot of that time, or even much later, since the ancient writings are so brief and vague in their references to it and to plants of similar type. Thus it is not always possible to ascribe with accuracy to individual species the various names which are in use. One Greek word usually translated as carrot, is “staphulinos” meaning “clustered”, evidently with reference to the umbel. Dioscorides, a physician of the first century in our era, whose work was the standard authority for 1,500 years, says the umbel or inflorescence had a little purple in the midst of the tuft, so it seems evident to regard it as the wild carrot. [...