WILD LETTUCE 



m July and August. As it appears by the roadside 

 before it blooms, it stands a plant of dignity and beauty, 

 like a seneschal of the highway. The flowering head 

 appears at first as a short, green club which soon 

 develops by easy stages into a loose, bushy inflorescence 

 consisting of many buds, few 

 flowers, and a fair coUection of 

 pappus pompons during the en- 

 tire flowering period. At this 

 time the strength of the plant 

 goes to the production of seed 

 and a general collapse sets in. 

 The individual flower-heads are 

 small, a quarter of an inch 

 across, pale yellow and followed 

 almost immediately by pappus 

 pompons which do not delay in 

 their coming but appear at once. 

 This abiHty to mature seed so 

 soon marks the efficiency of the 

 plant. 



The leaves are exceedingly 

 variable in size and shape, the lower sometimes a foot 

 long and very irregularly cut, gouged, and wavy-lobed, 

 usually sessile. As the leaves ascend they change in 

 shape becoming smaller, sometimes sharply angular 

 and few-lobed. 



Hairy or Red Wood-Lettuce. Lactuca hirsuta is 

 very similar to Canadensis but commonly smaller. 

 The two are usually neighbors. The stem is dark 

 reddish purple, less leafy, the leaves eared at the base 

 and often clasping, with fewer lobes, usually, and these 

 angular and entire. The small flower-heads, about 



237 



Leaf and Flower of Red Wood- 

 Lettuce. Lactuca hirsuta 



