The open plant encyclopedia
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.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Launaea intybacea
Also called Wild Lettuce, Bitter Lettuce
Launaea intybacea is a wild annual or biennial herb of the daisy family, growing up to about 1 m tall with lobed purple-backed leaves and small yellow flower heads. It is a weedy, sun-loving plant of warm, dry areas rather than a garden favourite, so the key to growing it is full sun and good drainage.
Launaea intybacea, with numerous English names, and often sharing the names wild lettuce and bitter lettuce with several other species, is a flowering plant of the family Asteraceae.
The iNaturalist page documenting locations of observations of Launaea intybacea by citizen scientists worldwide indicates that the species occurs in warmer parts of the world, from the Americas to southern Europe, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. It is noticeably missing from southeastern Asia and Australia.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Launaea intybacea 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.
