Your task was to identify national park mystery plant 16 using just these clues:

One of a pair that walks with a backpacker.

In the middle of an unbeatable hand.

Wild grows the snowman's nose.

Extravagant architecture.

The answer is Queen Anne's lace. Visit this site to see a photo of this plant.

Here is how you work through the clues.

The unbeatable hand in standard poker (no wild cards) is a royal flush. A very rare hand (five-card deal odds ca. 1:649,739), a royal flush is an ace-high straight -- A-K-Q-J-10 -- all in the same suit (either diamonds, hearts, spades or clubs). The Queen is the middle card in any royal flush. Since relatively few plant names include the word "queen," many people could be expected to guess Queen Anne's lace from just this one clue. Seeing that any one of the remaining clues is consistent with this answer would lock in the choice.

Few architectural styles could be considered more extravagant than the Queen Anne's, a variant of Victorian architecture that was popular with rich and super-rich Americans in the early 1900s. Building houses and mansions loaded with expensive exterior features that were basically decorative, such as steep roofs, turrets, and unusual shapes, offered lumber barons, railroad magnates, and other rich people a means to conspicuously display their wealth. Like the unbeatable hand, this architectural clue would alone be enough to disclose the mystery plant's identity to some people.

Since humans are clothed and bilaterally symmetric, the pairs that walk along with a backpacker include footwear (boots, socks, etc.), clothing items or gear (pants, shorts, etc.), and various body parts (legs, feet, etc.). The relevant pair here is the backpacker's bootlaces, each one of which is a lace. This is, of course, a corroborative clue rather than a primary one.

"Wild grows the snowman's nose" would be a highly useful clue to those who know that the traditional snowman's nose was either a carrot or a lump of coal, and that wild carrot is another name for Queen Anne's lace.

Queen Anne's Lace Is a Good Looking Weed

Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota) is a flowering plant that was introduced to this country from England. A member of the carrot family, this plant is also known in this country as wild carrot or bird's nest. Another name associated with the plant is bishop's lace.

It's easy to understand how lace could become a part of this plant's name. The flowers so closely resemble lace that many people liken the blooms to a lace doily. The small red flower that is sometimes found at the center of Queen Anne's lace blooms serves to attract insects for pollination. Some romantics have said that it represents a drop of blood that Queen Anne shed when she pricked herself with a needle while making the lace.

This is a very widely distributed plant, being found in all 48 of the coterminous states. Preferring full sun and well-drained soils, it is most commonly found in disturbed areas such as pastures, meadows, ditch banks, and highway or railroad rights of way. In June 2010 I saw unusually large Queen Anne's lace growing profusely along Skyline Drive in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park.

Although its blooms are quite attractive, Queen Anne's lace is a noxious weed that vigorously competes with native grasses and forbs. It can become a serious pest in some places that it invades, especially pastures and rights of way.

Some cautions are in order. People should be careful when handling Queen Anne's lace, since the plant's leaves can cause phytophotodermatitis, a condition that makes the skin hypersensitive to sunlight. Severe cases can cause inflammation, a burning sensation, and even blistering.

Another caution arises from the fact that the tender roots of young plants are edible and the crushed seeds are used as a contraceptive in traditional medicine. People who gather wild foods or herbal medicines need to be aware that wild carrot/Queen Anne's lace closely resembles poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), a highly poisonous import now invasive in at least a dozen U.S. states. It was a concoction of poison hemlock that purportedly killed the Greek philosopher Socrates.