Prickly lettuce (lactuca serriola – also known as compass plant and wild lettuce) is probably my favourite wild green to cook up with the recipes to be found in the ‘Recipes’ section of this website. It is the weedy ancestor of all cultivated lettuce, it oozes a milky sap when leaves are harvested. The leaves have prickly edges, a variable amount of lobes along the sides and the central rib on the underside of the leaf also has spines.
The plant has two stages of growth, in the first there is a rosette of leaves flush with the ground or slightly raised and they don’t look remarkable at this point. The milky sap and especially the spines along the midrib are a good means of identification. At this point I find the leaves are at their most succulent and tasty.
The second stage of growth is where they send up a stalk with leaves that are more heavily lobed and which tend to be send out in mainly two dimensions, hence the plants other common name: compass plant. The plant will eventually flower and set seed from this stalk. In this phase of growth the leaves are coarser, not so succulent and tend to be bitter.
