Prickly Lettuce

Lactuca serriola

The wild ancestor to garden lettuce, this is unsurprisingly the tastiest of the wild lettuces I’ve sampled. As good as any romaine when tender in the spring, this lettuce is one of the first greens to be eaten after winter. The ideal harvest window is entirely before the normal garden lettuce crop when the plants are 6-8inches after which the bitterness increases and they become tougher although still acceptable as a potherb. For this reason, I count on prickly lettuce from march to may and then garden lettuce after till july

Naturalized to Missouri and much of the world, this lettuce is a no effort permaculture green.