Shepherd's-needle

(Relating to subspecies pecten-veneris - the only subspecies occurring in the U.K.) Sparsely hairy annual. Stems to 50 cm, becoming hollow with age. Leaves bi- to tri-pinnate with lobes reaching around 10mm, narrow and entire to pinnatifid, petiole broadened at base and having scarious, usually ciliate margin. Umbels with 1-3 stout glabrous to sparsely hairy rays 0.5–4 cm in length; peduncle very short or absent; terminal umbel bearing hermaphrodite flowers and lateral umbels bearing variable proportions of male and hermaphrodite flowers. Bracts usually absent; bracteoles usually 5 in number, longer than pedicels, simple or irregularly (often deeply) divided. Flowers white; sepals small; outer petals not radiating; styles with enlarged base, forming stylopodium. Fruit 30-70mm, more or less cylindrical, slightly compressed laterally, with strongly dorsally flattened beak 3-4 times as long as and plainly distinct from seed-bearing portion, constricted at commissure; mericarps ribbed and scabrid with forward-pointing bristles on margins; carpophore present; vittae solitary and conspicuous; pedicels almost as thick as rays, glabrous at apex; styles 2-4 times as long as stylopodium, erect; stigma tapering. Cotyledons tapered gradually at base, without distinct petiole. Flowering time: May to June.

Scandix pecten-veneris has a range extending from Western, Central and Southern Europe Eastwards to Western and Central Asia and is found also in the Maghreb. Within the U.K. the plant used to be widely distributed as a weed of arable land in the Southeast of England, being found as far west as Wiltshire, but became rather rare in its former haunts, a state of affairs attributed to stubble-burning and the use of modern herbicides This gloomy tale of decline was, however, qualified in 1996 by wild food enthusiast Richard Mabey, who noted that, although the plant had suffered a dramatic decline in England, beginning in the 1950s, it began to recover with the banning of stubble-burning in the early 1990s. Furthermore — and contrary to earlier theories — the plant has proven to be resistant to modern herbicides after all and Mabey notes that the 'needles' of the plant are not readily separated from wheat by modern harvesting machinery — another factor contributing to its return to the English countryside.

Scandix pecten-veneris has a long history of use in Europe, both as a leaf vegetable and as a salad vegetable. Some of the earliest references to its consumption are to be found in Ancient Greek texts satirising the tragedian Euripides (c.480-c.406 B.C.), of Salamis Island, which portray the playwright's mother, Cleito, as a humble greengrocer, amongst whose wares was the vegetable scandix - the name of which was taken over direct into Latin as a name for chervil (a related, edible umbellifer). The edible plant scanthrix is mentioned also by the Ancient Greek writers Theophrastus, and Erasistratus of Ceos, while the variant form of the name scanthrox is used by Pedanius Dioscorides for the same plant. Among Latin authors, Pliny the Elder lists scandix among the edible plants of Egypt. Much later, the Vicentine physician Onorio Belli (a.k.a. Honorius Bellus, 1550–1604) notes that, in his day, it was eaten on the island of Crete.