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Lactuca indica
Also called Wild Lettuce
Lactuca indica is a biennial wild relative of lettuce in the daisy family, grown as a leafy vegetable, salad green and fodder. It is hardy and tolerant of a range of conditions, so it can be grown much like ordinary lettuce.
Lactuca indica, Indian lettuce, is a species of plant in the tribe Cichorieae within the family Asteraceae. It is native to western China (Xinjiang, Tibet), the Himalayas, and southwest Asia, as far west as Turkey. It is widely introduced elsewhere, even as far as east Africa, and is thought to be an archaeophyte in Japan, brought in with rice cultivation.
Lactuca indica is a biennial herb, growing from a taproot to at least 40 cm tall and often reaching 2 m. Its flowers have white to pale yellow ray florets with yellower centers. The narrowness of the leaf blades and the degree of spikiness of leaf lobes varies greatly by region.
Tall blue lettuce · Canada lettuce · Willowleaf lettuce · Celtuce · Iceberg lettuce · Romaine lettuce · Lettuce · Prickly lettuce · Bitter lettuce · Lettuce
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lactuca indica by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
