Those look beautiful! Love those oak leaf lettuces, so pretty! Which ones are the morrocan/original ones, the green Oakleaf specimens?
ETA: i was able to find what the morrocan lettuce looks like, I think; due to the other name you gave Cressonnette du Maroc! Some nice looking plants!
I have developed several lines of cultivated lettuces crossed with wild lettuces.
You can follow my breeding project and buy seeds on my blog:
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Welcome Joran! Wow, that’s some impressive breeding projects you’ve taken on!
Interesting. I’m playing it safe by crossing some ordinary lettuces. Do you grow those as well? And do you keep distance between?
If you have time there’s an introduction section. Easy for French/Européan/international fellow breeders to find you.
https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/c/introduce-yourself/9
And the seed train is coming to France coming month in the Serendipity seed swab Europe , will be interesting seeds in there too.
https://goingtoseed.discourse.group/t/serendipity-seed-swap-eu-version
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I’ve been doing exactly the same for the past two years with the goal of creating a naturalized, self seeding lettuce. I’m starting to get volunteer lettuces in a few places and I’m saving seed from all the late bolters. Happy to swap some lettuce grex with anyone in zone 6 and bellow! (No wild lettuce in the mix… yet!)
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Look @mare.silba , how great your mix is doing!
-10C this morning. Not a worry in the world. I see all sorts of variety, some look like deer tongue others like whatever.
I’m thinking this season just to make lettuce mix.
It’s kind of doing my head in to keep track of every thing.
What do you think and other people?
Should we be superserious or worry less?
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I also found this fall a naturally hybridized Radichetta salad in my grex since it was green with red point like some cultivated salad next to Freedom mix Franck Morton.
I just checked, but apparently she didn’t spend the winter too.
But if we are 3 to have the same experience with the same variety it no longer looks like a coincidence
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Nice! I’m glad it seems like it works for your winter lettuce.
I’m also having similar variations showing up this winter, I could be there was some additional crossing last year between original F1 cross and some other various lettuce mix I had growing near, from which ‘deer tongue’ like one and one other variety (green with slightly curly edges, from mix for cutting young leaves) are the only ones that survived to flowering stage.
From what I’m seeing in my plants, it’s possible that those two managed to cross with my F1 plants.
I’ll have to upload some photos from later from computer.
This year I’ll probably end up saving most of lettuce seed as mix, but also if something turns up doing really well in traits like late bolting, taste etc. I’l save some smaller quantity of those seeds separately
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Deertongue even. How Côme you have the same lettuces as i do. There’s hundreds…
Both of us, and people from Serendipity Seed Swap (EU) who took my F2 seeds, are growing from the same generation of seeds.
So I’ll go through explanation again, you never know who might find it usefull.
I had spontaneous cross between morroccan/radichetta and outredgeous varieties that I noticed last spring. Those plants were actually F1 generation and were grown from F1 seeds a.k.a. the original cross. Those F1 plants made some additional crosses I was refering in my last post, with some other lettuces growing nearby. And when those F1 plants bolted and made seeds they made a F2 generation of seeds, which I sent to you and also put in serendipity package.
So we both grow that same (F2) generation this winter and spring and should see at least some similar variations.
What it comes to - variability that both of us are seeing is a product of crossing between different plants in my garden through 2 consecutive years/generations.
Is this any clearer?
Or I misunderstud your last comment completely…
Btw. deer tongue like lettuces are called wolf tongue in Croatian language 
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Oh nice grex. I did not get the change to try those seeds yet from the serendipity. Maybe when comes back to me.
Talking about letucce, last year I planted green and red letucce, and a couple months back I found that a lot of volunteer plants are natural hybrids that are a mix of colours, green with touches of red. I will try to save seed from those plants. Looks like the hybrid vigor has helped the volunter letucce to sprout and tolerate dryness…
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If you don’t manage to take my seeds from Serendipity package, just send me a message and I can send you some directly, I should still have something to share.
This is great, it looks to me that we here have nice success in spontaneous crossing of lettuce. Probably several factors add to it - abundant pollinators, interplanting/mixing of varieties and varieties that are more prone to crossing than your general store variety of lettuce.
It would be great if you manage to save some seeds from your volunteers, I would be interested if you’ll have some to share
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I’ve taken some photos of my lettuce grex - F2 generation., last week I think, and would like to share them with you
As I mentioned before, it looks like there was some additional crossing between my F1 cross and two other varieties that were nerby in low numbers…
I didn’t get a picture of every lettuce plant, but all lettuce plants in pictures are from the same generation of seeds. I’m so happy there is a lot of diversity in shapes and colours.
They are on the smaller side because I’m regularly picking outer leaves for eating, I’ll stop picking leaves when plants get near bolting stage and leave that energy for strong flowers and seeds.
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Sure, there is still a little left until I get the package again.
Yep, I plan on saving those seeds for sure. Last year my lettuce saved seed got rain on, so those volunteer are my seeds bank now.
Two varieties planted contiguously. I got a lot of pollinators.
These are the original varieties
I sense that these are the crosses. They got the form of the red one and most of the green color, right? I have not planted more lettuce near so they should be.
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Yes, it’s a nice cross and you’re right about shape and colour of crosses. How old are those plants? I wonder if those red blushes will become more, well, red and/or spread on more leaf area with more sun exposure with following months
I think our collective experience just confirms that when you interplant different varieties and have different plants next to each other those cross pollination rates can go much higher. Probably those rates were calculated with planting different varieties in blocks
I can not say for sure, 2+ months? They are quite small. I will check for the change of color.
Yep. At least this cross is easy to identify with color or leaf form. How many possible crosses have we missed that do not have an easy way to identify?
A bit of an update for my lettuce grex.
I found a new cross that I particularly like - radichetta like serrated leaves with dark red/purple colour, even in flowering stage.
My ultimate goal is having various coloured (and shaped) lettuce that is self-seeding, resistant to slugs and snails (that’s mostly for early growing stage latte summer/early autumn, later I don’t have problems), resistant to heat and late bolting.
For most parts radichetta works really well in my place - volunteers already apearing and it’s latest bolting of all varieties I tried and allmost all crosses that apeared so far. But I want reds in it! And different shapes. Also try to push bolting time even further.
This new cross has wonderful colour and it appears it is among later bolting plants this year.
I’m not sure if it comes from my F2 crossed seeds or from F1/F2 generation of seeds taken from mother plants that look the same as original varieties that I tried (growing them all mixed together and abundance of pollinators makes for a higher crossing rates among my lettuce plants). That means that all of you who took my lettuce seeds - either F2 grex or other populations - have a chance for this form to appear too.
I’'l definitely keep the seeds from this plant separate and seed it in higher proportions next round.
Few photos from two different dates
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great, the first red Radichetta… keep the seeds !
You were faster than me, it was in my year goals (I try with Lollo Rossa, a red frieze to see).
however I released the first Radichetta with dotts ! 
Radichetta is really the easy salad to start hybridization…
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I definitely will!
I still didn’t decide should I cover/isolate this particular plant and have it self-pollinate for this season or should I just leave it to cross freely with other lettuce plants I have growing.
I’m more on the side of isolating it this year - as I’ll keep the seeds separate from others, I want to have higher proportion of seeds with that stunning colour and also with the latter bolting pattern it already shows. Also, as nearest lettuce plants (in that same pot) aren’t from my grex but from some mix of lettuce for cutting young leaves, which are earlier bolting and form smaller plants - I just don’t want to introduce those traits in this particular new line of lettuce I’ve got. I’ll have plenty of time and space following seasons to play with it.
What do you all think about it? I’ll have to make a decision in following few days, I’m expecting that red radichetta to open it’s flowers very soon
indeed if the neighbors are lettuce to be cut would be a shame to let them hybridize with.
I think I’ll let his three lettuces hybridize together which should make back-crossing or this type of hybrid again.
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