A gardener got her own unique high five-a-day in one go after digging up a hand-shaped carrot complete with five fingers.
When Dianne Neal from Essex discovered the peculiar root vegetable, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The carrot features curved, appropriately-sized fingers, an outward-pointing thumb, and even a circular palm, giving it the appearance of a right hand.
There are two main groups or cultivars of carrots – eastern and western. Although unusual, a carrot with multiple taproots like this one is not a special cultivar. Instead its strange shape is due to damage caused by growing in rocky soil.
The useful carrot is not the only orange vegetable that resembles a human. In his Shropshire garden, Peter Jackson, 66, discovered an almost identical carrot in 2009.
He promptly cooked it and served it to his amazed daughter Lindsay.
Lindsay, 42, said: “We couldn’t believe it, it was quite a shock to see a carrot perfectly shaped like a hand.
“You’d think that with me being a chef and my dad a gardener, we might have come across something this strange before – but we never have.
“My dad just seemed to make some joke about it being ‘handy’, took a picture and then I think they just ate it. He played it all down, but that’s just the way dad is.
“Since then, we haven’t experienced anything strange, including arms or legs. His garden isn’t making an attempt to grow a carrot man, in my opinion. That would be really unusual.
“It was just one of those one-off freak of nature occurrences – but isn’t it funny?”
The carrot claw has joined a growing list of freaky foodstuffs vying for the title of weirdest veg grown in the county – and it is up against some tasty opposition.
Eastern carrots are purple or yellow while western carrots, which developed around the 17th century, are typically orange.
Carotene, which is converted by humans into vitamin A, gives carrots their vibrant color. While vitamin A is essential for maintaining the health of your eyes, it will not, contrary to what your mother claimed, improve your ability to see in the dark.
