Last year, we grew grand rapids lettuce (Lactuca sativa) at my school’s community garden and I saved seeds from them after they bloomed. We planted those this spring. Out of a few hundred plants, a few of them look a bit different - they have the compact growth form and large leaf size of grand rapids lettuce I got them from, but the leaf shape resembles the wild prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola) growing nearby. The leaves are less ruffled and the midrib has spines on the bottom. the flavor and leaf color are somewhere in between the two. So I guess some L. serriola pollen got into those flowers and it resulted in a hybrid! I heard about this happening on the landrace gardening course, and it’s pretty cool to see in person.
These hybrids do much better in my dry climate than the other varieties I’m growing, probably a result of the wild lettuce genes and hybrid vigor. I’ll be saving seeds from these plants, hopefully they cross with the new varieties I added this year and eventually I’ll have a population that’s both hardy and delicious!
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Awesome! and excellent photos too!
I usually hate the taste of lettuce, even the non-bitter kind somehow (idk why, I guess mustards are my thing). Reguardless how does the hybrid taste like? You said in between so I assume it’s very bitter? Did it have a lot of white sap when you break the hybrid’s stems/leaves?
The hybrid does have that milky white sap and bitterness, less so than the wild one but more than the domesticated one!
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I wonder what would happen if you cross it with wild lettuce species Good Lettuce (Lactuca canadensis)? It’s sap is bronze and significantly less bitter, already a decent salad green without any selection process.
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That would be interesting, I haven’t seen that species here but according to iNaturalist there are some populations in nearby cities. Maybe I’ll search for it and see if I can get some pollen or seeds from them!
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Yes Please do! I found a local population thanks to INaturalist & save the seeds. I hope to come back & get more later this year when they finish ripening. Hopefully I can get a crap ton, more than enough to share with GTS community.
Easy way to distinguish it is by the bronze sap that oozes from it when cut or a leaf broken. I’ve tried a few leaves, they were mildly bitter even in the bolted state.
Now as someone who hates lettuce in general wild or cultivated, Mostly because of the taste bland or bitter and also because I like Cruciferous greens so much more!. However this one was surprisingly not as bad. It makes me want to try them in the basal rosset stage (before it bolts) & give it a 2nd chance (This might be a lettuce I enjoy - like finally this is the chance for lettuce to win me over, especially if I cross them with cultivated lettuce types).
This is from Foraging Expert Samuel Thayer 2023 book, he prefers this wild lettuce species (Lactuca canadensis) over any cultivated lettuce. Perhaps it’s precisely because the bronze sap taste less bitter?
