How we come to have a wild lettuce in our tiny front garden I don’t know, but at ten feet high there is no ignoring it. Lactuca virosa is its name. At first, in March, it looked rather like a stripling primrose, with long oblong slightly toothed leaves. These mounded up, and by April clearly had higher ambitions. It grew steadily, its long leaves at intervals of a foot or so on its straight stem. It had a useful prop in the myrtle supported by our neighbour’s wall. At ten feet or so it produced an impressive panicle of tiny yellow flowers quickly followed by fluffy seedheads a little like clematis seeds,
Sadly it tastes bitter. No, worse than that. I shan’t be exploring its supposed psychedelic properties. But I wonder where it came from.
