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| WILD LETTUCE PLANT... |
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| ...DANDELION-LIKE FLOWERS... |
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| ...MILKY SAP
Friday, 8:00 AM. 61 degrees F at the ferry dock, 55 on the back porch. Wind NW, calm with light gusts. The sky has scattered clouds and haze, the humidity is 88% and the barometer is falling, currently at 29.97". We may get some rain tonight,
Wild lettuce is growing in unmowed roadside ditches around town and elsewhere. It looks pretty much like an overgrown, loosely put together dandelion. The sharply toothed leaves may be somewhat prickly. Like the dandelion, the genus Lactuca is in the family Compositae. The genus is cosmopolitan, with perhaps fifty species worldwide. More than a dozen species occur in eastern North America; that pictured is probably L. serriola, prickly lettuce. Our species are mostly Eurasian.
A common trait of plants in the genus is that, as the Latin name implies, they all exude a milky sap when a leaf is pulled from the stem. The common garden lettuce, L. sativa, is probably a descendent of this plant, and although the young leaves of wild Lactuca species are probably edible, I don't recommend doing so. In European folk medicine the milky sap was considered a mild narcotic or sedative .
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