Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Biannual lettuce

Lactuca ludoviciana

Also called Western Lettuce, Louisiana Lettuce, Prairie Lettuce, Western Wild Lettuce

Biannual lettuce
Photo: David Peden https://www.inaturalist.org/people/wafflemaster135, CC0

Lactuca ludoviciana is a North American wild lettuce, a biennial herb in the daisy family that grows from a taproot to about 150 cm tall. It is a wild species, not a salad crop, and it is found mainly on the North American Great Plains.

Family
Asteraceae (Daisy family)
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly once established, letting the soil dry between drinks.
Soil
Well-drained, average or poor soil; tolerates dry, sandy or gravelly ground.
Temperature
Hardy in cold winters; tolerates hot summers typical of the prairie.
How easy
Easy
Native range
W. & C. Canada to NE. Mexico

About

Lactuca ludoviciana, the biannual lettuce, is a North American species of wild lettuce. It is widespread across much of central and western Canada and the western and central United States from Ontario west to British Columbia and south to Louisiana, Texas, and California. Most of the known populations are on the Great Plains; populations west of there may well represent naturalizations.

Lactuca ludoviciana is a biennial herb in the dandelion tribe within the daisy family growing from a taproot a height of up to 150 cm (5 feet). The top of the stem bears a multibranched inflorescence with many flower heads. Each head contains 20-50 yellow ray florets but no disc florets.

Other Lactuca plants

Cicerbita macrophylla · Lactuca aculeata · Lactuca alpestris · Tall blue lettuce · Canada lettuce · Lactuca dissecta · Lactuca dolichophylla · Woodland lettuce · Grassleaf lettuce · Hairy lettuce · Indian lettuce · African Lettuce

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lactuca ludoviciana 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…