English: Shepherd's-needle; Venus' comb; Lady's Comb; Sheperd's comb; Stork's needle; Needle of Adam, the beggar, the clock, the crow, the Devil, the old wife, old woman, witch, Puck, shepherd, tailor.
Scandix is in origin a Latin word for chervil used by Pliny the Elder, who was also the first to record the descriptive name pecten Veneris signifying 'Venus's comb'.
Region: Eurasia
Habitat: ruderal; dry, calcareous soils; open meadows, woodland edges; arable land
Use: leaf vegetable, salad vegetable.

Botany
Sparsely hairy annual.
Stems to 50 cm, becoming hollow with age.
Leaves: bipinnate to tripinnate; lobes reaching around 10mm, narrow and entire to pinnatifid; petiole broadened at base and having scarious, usually ciliate margin.
Inflorescence: 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: ± 5cm; ± 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.
Fruit: long; thickened body up to 1.5 centimeters long and a beak up to 7 centimeters long; lined with comblike bristles.
Chromosome number: 2n = 16,26.