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Oriental Lettuce
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Oriental Lettuce
P Native Unknown Photo: Christian Bravard
Common name: Oriental Lettuce
Botanical name: Lactuca orientalis    Family: Asteraceae (Sunflower family)

Oriental Lettuce is a subshrub 20-60 cm tall, hairless or nearly so, spiny, branched from base. Flower-heads are borne singly at branch-ends and stalked or lateral and stalkless, with 4 or 5 pale yellow florets. Involucre is narrowly cylindric, 7-10 mm at anthesis, to 1.5 cm in fruit. Phyllaries are green to bluish purple; outer phyllaries ovate, below velvet-hairy; inner phyllaries 3(or 4), tip blunt. Flower-cluster-stalk, when present, is sharp-pointed, remaining as a spine after shedding of flower. Stems are whitish, rigid, intricately and widely branched. Leaves are glaucous green. Basal leaves are in rosette, wavy-toothed to pinnately lobed; lateral lobes 2-4 pairs, triangular, retrorse, tip pointed. Stem leaves are similar to basal leaves but smaller, less incised, and basally with linear ears adnately long decurrent on stem. Oriental Lettuce is found on mountain slopes and scree, on clay or loamy soil, on lime deposits, on gravel, in dry ravines, below 3800 m, in E. Mediterranean to Xinjiang and W Himalaya, Arabian Peninsula.

Identification credit: Christian Bravard Photographed in Ladakh.

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