Need help identifying root veg please

[Hawfinch]

HI all,
my neighbour showed me this plant yesterday asking what it might be, I’m not really sure though. The leaves look and smell carroty, but the pale root throws me. Could it be root parsley also called Hamburg Root Parsley which is sold as a veg here in Switzerland? Just strange with the carrot smell to the leaves.

[RandA]

Looks like some sort of Parsley root to me
good luck with finding out from someone in the know
Ali

[lieven]

Definitely a white carrot, probably from an unwanted cross. Carrot crosses readily with Queen Anne’s Lace, and your seed grower almost certainly didn’t isolate the carrot seed crop 100% from this wild plant. Test this strange root yourself: it smells like carrot & tastes like carrot, but it’s rather fibrous.

[charles]

Your neighbour needed to give you more information – is there a whole row of them, is this one rogue plant, what did they actually sow?
Many umbellifers look similar. I agree with liven that the leaves make it likely to be a carrot cross.
However it also looks like cumin! I grew that last year, it flowered this year, great seeds.

[Hawfinch]

Thanks everybody for your input. I’ll see if I can get hold of my neighbour and ask her although I think it’s probably a rogue plant, she doesn’t do much gardening.

[Hawfinch]

To finish it off – her neighbour had carrots sown next to her plot so it’s most probably, like you suggest, a carrot cross or wild carrot.
Thanks again for your suggestions.

[Author]

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