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Lactuca virosa
Also called Great lettuce, Acrid Lettuce, Greater Lettuce, Greater Prickly Lettuce, Wild Lettuce
Lactuca virosa is a tall, biennial wild relative of common lettuce, found on roadsides, coasts and waste ground, and is grown mainly as a wild or medicinal plant rather than a crop. It is not a typical garden vegetable, and its sap contains bitter compounds with sedative effects.
Lactuca virosa is a plant in the Lactuca (lettuce) genus, often ingested for its mild analgesic and sedative effects. It is related to common lettuce (L. sativa), and is often called wild lettuce, bitter lettuce, laitue vireuse, opium lettuce, poisonous lettuce, tall lettuce, great lettuce or rakutu-karyumu-so.
Found coastally in Great Britain, rarely in the north-east of Ireland. Lactuca virosa is widespread across much of central and southern Europe. It can be found locally in the south east and east of England. In the rest of Great Britain it is very rare, and in Ireland it is absent. It is also found in the Punjab region of Pakistan and India and Australia where it grows in the wild.
Tall blue lettuce · Canada lettuce · Indian lettuce · Willowleaf lettuce · Celtuce · Iceberg lettuce · Romaine lettuce · Lettuce · Prickly lettuce · Lettuce
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lactuca virosa 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.
