Lettuce

Lactuca sativa

Also known as Garden Lettuce, Cultivated Lettuce

At a glance

Family

Asteraceae (Daisy family)

Type

Annual leafy vegetable

Parts used

Leaves, and occasionally the milky sap or seed

Size

6 to 12 inches tall, forming loose heads or rosettes

Bloom

Small yellow, dandelion-like flowers on a tall bolted stalk in summer heat

Habitat

Cool garden beds and cultivated fields worldwide, native ancestry traced to the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia

Acquisition

Grow or buy

Key benefits

✦

Gentle evening calm

Light, cooling nourishment

Hydrating garden green

Traditional mild sedative

Traditional uses

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Lettuce has been grown at the table for thousands of years, appearing in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings where it was prized as both food and a plant sacred to fertility gods. Long before it was simply a salad crop, gardeners noticed that its milky sap, released when a stem is cut or the plant bolts to flower, carried a faint soporific quality reminiscent of its wilder cousin, the opium lettuce. From this observation grew a quiet home tradition of steeping the leaves into a mild bedtime tea, sipped to ease a restless mind after a long day. Cottage gardeners and herbalists of old Europe also valued it as a cooling, easily digested food for those recovering from illness.

How to grow & use it

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🔒

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✦ Growing guide
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Pairs well with

✦Chamomile
✦Lemon Balm

Substitutes

✦Wild Lettuce (Lactuca virosa)
✦Chamomile

Choose it when

“For a quiet, dew-cool moment at the close of the day.”

Did you know?

The word lettuce comes from the Latin lac, meaning milk, a nod to the pale, faintly bitter sap that beads up wherever a stem or rib is cut.

Safety

Garden lettuce is a safe, everyday food. Its wild relative, wild lettuce (Lactuca virosa), is more strongly sedative and shouldn't be confused with it; use caution combining lettuce preparations with sedative medication.