|
Blue
Lettuce
Lactuca tatarica (L.) C.A. Mey.
Synonym: Lactuca pulchella
|
Family: Asteraceae,
Aster or Composite
Genus: Lactuca
Description
General: plant with milky sap, 20-100 cm tall.
Growth habit:
perennial from white, deep-seated, creeping
root, often growing in patches.
Stems:
erect, hairless or almost so.
 Leaves: alternate, narrowly lance-shaped, 5-18 cm
long and 6-35 mm wide, entire, or the lower ones more or
less with triangular, backward-pointig lobes or sharply
toothed, often with waxy coating beneath.
 Flowerheads: blue, showy, about 2 cm wide, with
18-50 ray florets only, several in open clusters. Involucre
15-20 mm high in fruit, with overlapping bracts in 3 rows.
Flowering time: June-September.
 Fruits: achenes, 4-7 mm long, the slender body
moderately compressed, prominently several-nerved on
each face, the beak stout, often whitish, equaling or less
than half as long as the body. Pappus of white, hair-like
bristles.
Distribution
Mostly in meadows, thickets, and other moist places,
plains to foothills, in all parts of MT. Also in AK and CA
to MN and MO.
 
Edible and Medicinal plant, see below. |
|
|
|
(click on image for full size)
|
|
(click on images for full size)
Edible uses:
Young leaves - raw or cooked - of blue lettuce have been eaten by Native tribes. However, caution should be used, because of the mild narcotic properties of the plant, see below.
Medicinal uses:
A tea of the roots and stems has been used by the Okanagan-Colville Indians of British Columbia in the treatment of diarrhea in children. Hemorrhoids have been treated by applying a moist, usually warm or hot mass of plant material.
The whole plant is rich in a milky sap, containing 'lactucarium', which is used in medicine for its mildly pain-relieving, antispasmodic, digestive, urination-inducing, hypnotic, narcotic and sedative properties.
Lactucarium has mild narcotic effects. It has been taken internally in the treatment of insomnia, anxiety, neuroses, hyperactivity in children, dry coughs, whooping cough, rheumatic pain etc. The sap has also been applied externally in the treatment of warts. The plant should be used with caution, and never without the supervision of a skilled practitioner. Even normal doses can cause drowsiness, excess causes restlessness and overdoses can cause death through cardiac paralysis.
Varieties:
Our specimen belong to var. pulchella (Pursh) Breitung. |
|
|
Copyright © Plant-Life.org
|
|
