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Wild Lettuce

Lactuca Canadensis. Composite Family.

Stem.--Noticeably tall, from four to nine feet high; leafy; smooth or nearly so. Leaves.--Usually six inches to a foot long; pale beneath; the upper lance-shaped and not toothed; the others usually wavy, lobed, or cut. Flower-heads.--Pale yellow; small; composed of strap-shaped flowers; numerous in usually long and narrow clusters.

The wild lettuce is common in the wet and somewhat open thickets of late summer. It is perhaps rendered more conspicuous by its unusual height and lobed leaves than by its insignificant flowers. For my own part I rarely notice this plant during its period of blossoming, although my eye is constantly arrested by its feathery seed-clusters during the fruiting season.