Lettuce

Lettuce is an annual of the daisy family, grown nearly everywhere as a leaf vegetable and eaten mostly raw in salads, though its stems and seeds are used as well. Its native range runs from the Mediterranean to Siberia. Once past the edible stage, a plant sends up a flower stalk up to a metre tall bearing small yellow flowers. It was first domesticated from its wild ancestor near the Caucasus for the oil pressed from its seeds, and spread to Egypt, where its cultivation is pictured as early as 2680 BC. The Egyptians held it sacred to Min, a god of reproduction, carrying it in his festivals and setting it beside his images. Greeks and Romans took it up in turn, and the Roman name lactuca, from the milky latex that seeps from cut stems, is the root of the English word. Medieval writers such as Hildegard of Bingen treated it as a medicinal herb. Cunningham makes it a plant of the Moon and water, for sleep, chastity and protection. Rubbing its juice on the forehead or eating the leaves is meant to bring easy sleep, eating it guards against temptations of the flesh and seasickness, and a lettuce patch protects the garden, though some held that growing too much of it would leave a household barren.