The walking group passed this today in front of a house near 27th and Main. It looks like a salad green, or some sort of brassica?
Many of the lettuces will do that if you only harvest the basal leaves, let them keep going, and don't have a single hot snap in the growing season. You have to harvest them pretty much daily, though. My personal record with an oakleaf lettuce like the one in the photo is 6 months and 5 feet of stem.
As you were out with a walking group, I really wanted this to be the novel Walking Stick Kale (AKA Jersey Kale), but the leaves indicate that Lorax has it right.
Thanks lorax. Too bad about the missed opportunity, woodschmoe, but you did manage to get that into the posting, and I've learned about two interesting plants for the price of one.
I would knock on the door and ask, but, if I had to make a guess, I would say Chinese stem lettuce, though the leaves, again, don't look completely right.
I did ask a neighbour, thinking it was his plot. He never thought to ask what it was. Once lorax put me on to lettuce, I did look up Chinese stem lettuce, for which I only found photos cut and on display in a market. I also thought the leaves weren't right and the stems seemed different.
The stems of the ready to harvest plants may look a little different when compared to the overgrown ones. As for the leaves, there can be different varieties of the stem lettuce?
Saltcedar's link goes to a page for Shungiku, Broadleaf (really, as a noun), common name Garland Chrysanthemum, botanical name Chrysanthemum coronarium. This has itself a new name, Glebionis coronaria (changed sex in the renaming). The leaves in the calflora page for this don't seem shapely enough. We're still in Asteraceae anyway. I had no idea lettuce was in that family. I was happy enough to call it an oak leaf lettuce, particularly since lorax says she's been eating stuff that looks like it and grows like it, but she did say many of the lettuces will do that, so it is interesting to read about what those might include.
I harvest my lettuce by picking the bottom leaves but none of the lettuces I have grown developed this kind of growth habit. But, where I live the summer and hot temperatures come quickly after only a very short time of a spring-like weather. So, may be because of that. It would be interesting to see a picture of lorax's lettuce, could you post one?
I'm not currently growing lettuces, Sundrop (it's summer, and that makes the leafy greens an exercise in futility - it goes over 30 C daily right now), and I never thought to take photos of the ones I was harvesting last winter. I will next winter, though!
Does this method of growing lettuce inhibit flowering in some way? I would love to try it but I fear mine would flower before they got to 2 feet tall, let alone 5 feet. It would keep the slugs away from the leaves, it would be worth doing for that alone.
Try it anyway, Maf. If you get a good, steady spring and summer without many heat spikes, they'll keep going for a goodly long while before they bolt.
Thanks, I will give it a go. I have some oak leaf type seeds. What other varieties or types of lettuce does it work with? Forellenschluss would look amazing grown this way but it is more of a cos/romaine type
Any loose-headed leaf lettuce seems to work; I've done it with Red Oaktag and that's just spectacular.
I'm sorry I didn't remember all the questions I wanted to ask the owner, whom I caught today pulling out all these plants. She doesn't really know the name, but used the word "lettuce" and said they were Chinese. Her friend gets seeds from Taiwan and gives her the young plants in March or April, at which point they do not have stalks. She cooks the leaves, does not use the stalks. So Chinese stem lettuce sounds like an apt description for these ones, whether or not it's the exact common name. We know someone in Taiwan right now whom we could ask to bring us some seeds.
Chinese stem Lettuce is more like a description. The common name is Celtuce, scientific Lactuca sativa.
Lactuca sativa is just the botanical name for lettuce, each particular garden type would have additional words used to indicate which they were.
Interesting that the gardener does not eat the stalks. It would seem that the stalks are part of the reason for growing this, assuming we are talking about the right plant--and I think we are. Celtuce - Lactuca sativa var. asparagina http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mv044 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtuce I would bet the seed is available locally.
