A request from our friends at the Seed Library Network – Does anyone have any photos of lettuce winnowing to share? Thank you @Lora for the lettuce going to to seed, and any additional photos of that would also be appreciated. Thank you!
Thanks to the interesting stories I’m hearing about landracing salads - live here in Antibes - I’m just reading through the posts about the ability of radichetta to cross pollinate more. I didn’t know this particular variety and had to look through my notes. When I searched my notes the name appeared under what we call the Catalogna-group of salad cikories (Cichorium intybus var. foliosum Catalogna group). I just put the name there as a synonym. But wikipedia also an entry for a Cichorium intybus called ‘Radichetta’.
Are you sure the hybrids you’re seeing are not chicories that have sneaked into the salad bowl?
Chicory crosses much more readily and the species also seem to freely cross, e.g. between C. intybus and C. endivia. I’ll be the first to admit that I could easily get confused and don’t know the botanical characteristics that distinguish the two genera. If someone has a good source to tell them apart, I would love to see and learn.
Might be so Malte, they taste like lettuce to me though. I’ve had three grexes from members @marcela_v , @stephane_rave and @mare.silba with the crosses. I had all of their seeds and combined it into the European Supergrex with more then a hundred varieties to distribute in Antibes. They are all over the place now, a hundred of visitors will grow them! Yay!!!
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I’m thinking there must be both a Lactuca and a Cichorium with this name. Talking with @mare.silba about this today and we came to the same conclusion. If you’ve saved seed and combined it with the other salad seeds, I would assume the seed shape to look too differently if it was a chicory.
Do you have any links to the salad called Radichetta? I’m curious to learn more about it. If it really crosses as much as the three of you experience in your gardens, I would like to grow it too and understand it. I love salad.
Not like those seeds at all. I’ve got a lot of Mare’s crosses and it’s in the European supergrex as well Malte. I think I got a lot of it turning to seed ‘pure’ in the garden. I hope I can still confirm on that one later as I find old lettuce like baby lettuce very similar, much like us humans funny enough.
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Yes, the seeds are different in those two groups. There are also easily visible differences in habitus (form of the plant) while flowering. I’ll send more details with pictures for general reference and everyone interested, but some days later when I return home from Antibes.
I found very little information on radichetta lettuce variety online, notably that it is an old Italian variety and that it was recently remarketed/renamed for the French seed market as a green lettuce from Morocco. In one of my earlier posts here I wrote everything I could find at the time. I’ll try to find those websites again and maybe some more info. Again, when I’m back home ;-).
@Malte - hope that you and Shifa can sleep ok on the train :-). Safe travels
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hi Malte!
No fear the Radichetta we talked about together this days in Antibes is a lettuce Lactuca sativa.
If we really managed to cross Cichorium x Lactusa we would be champions of genetics ! 
here is a link from where my genetic comes :
you can find it under different names :
CATALOGNA, CERBIATTA, CRESSONETTE MAROCAINE, LANGUE DE CANARI
it really a must have plant :
Hardy, grows all season, drought resistant, slow to run, sweet flavor…and incredibly gifted plant to cross with other lettuces
Now I understand better. We call this type of lettuce “oak-leaved lettuce”, I believe English-speakers have a similar name. I had no idea it hybridized more easily. I grow this type at the school mixed with all the other lettuces. I haven’t looked for crosses and just assumed that the diversity there came mostly from self-pollinating varieties. I will start looking more closely. How wonderful if we could end up with a more out-crossing population of lettuce.
(On another note: The popular names can really confuse me. Not only do the Italians call both a lettuce and a chicory for radichetta, they seem to call both of them another name too - Catalogna! Incidentally, one of my favorite chicory types)
the oak leaved lettuces are a still different family of lettuce.
Radichetta is a distinct variety (more pointed lobes)…but I am sure it’s one of the parent ancestors of all oak leaves with regard to the morphology of the leaves.
many of the hybrids Radichetta hybridized with head lettuces, are similar to oak leaves !
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We also have different oak-leaved lettuce varieties (also with that name) here, but I don’t think any of them are actually radichetta., like Stephane said. For example here are 2 varieties available in Croatia and both look differently https://lokvina.hr/shop/cijena/salata-hrastov-list-za-rezanje and Salata RUBINETTE HRASTOV LIST | Ekološko organsko sjeme cijena | Prodaja akcija Hrvatska | Lokvina.
My genetics also came from Kokopelli. I found some info on radichetta here:
you can also find it here Catalogna Lettuce - Organic Seeds - Ferme de Sainte Marthe - Loose leaf Radichetta
About this - one of Italian names for chycory in general is “radicchio”, so radichetta would mean radicchio-like / chycory-like. And yes, there is a chycory variety/type with leaves like dandelion that goes by the name of Catalonia. And so confusion begins…
If we look at the following document with the domestication map, we realize that the older the variety is, the more leaves are cutted/lobbed like Lactusa serriola
It is therefore very likely that the Radichetta, with its very cut leaves, is a primitive variety that comes from the east…
We must try to find the genealogical situation of Radichetta in the family trees of lettuces ! 
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In my experiments with crosses between cultivated and wild lettuces, it was the Oakleaf that had the leaf morphotype, and that formed hybrids most similar to L. sativa subsp. serriola var. serriola. The hybrids with Radichetta were very different from the wild plants.
But the Oakleaf type and the canary tongue type / Radichetta both belong to var. crispa. And it is certainly this botanical variety that contains the morphotypes closest to subsp. serriola.
And of course, romaine lettuce (var. longifolia) is very close to L. sativa subsp. serriola var. integrifolia.
You can see the pictures here:
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Just catching up on this thread.
Does anyone have any links to videos on hand pollination of lettuce? Thee are a couple on you tube, but they are not very clear on emasculation.
I have what looks like a cross of a red spotted Cos lettuce with wild lettuce growing in my garden, and I want to cross this individual to some of the other diverse lettuces that are all just about to flower in my garden to increase diversity in the mix.
gm