Carrots: a most satisfying cool-weather crop

Carrots are native to Europe and parts of Asia and
Africa, but now have escaped around the world and
those wild carrots are known as Queen Anne's lace.

Carrots (Daucus carota) are in the carrot family Apiaceae. While this plant family includes quite a few well-known and economically important crop plants as anise, caraway, carrot, celery, chervil, coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, parsley, and parsnip, there are also a few highly poisonous species, such as poison hemlock, water hemlock, spotted cowbane, and fool's parsley. 

The defining characteristic of this family is the inflorescence, the flowers nearly always aggregated in terminal umbels, that may be simple or more commonly compound. The other name for this family is Umbelliferae.