Least lettuce

Lactuca saligna, willow lettuce or least lettuce, is a slender annual or biennial herb in the family Asteraceae native to southern and central Europe, the Mediterranean basin, North Africa, and western Asia, and naturalized in scattered localities elsewhere including parts of North America. Plants grow 30–100 cm tall with a smooth, erect, sparsely branched, glaucous stem exuding a milky white latex when cut. The leaves are alternate, narrowly linear to lanceolate, 5–15 cm long but only a few millimetres to 2 cm wide, mostly entire or with a few small basal lobes, and held nearly vertically against the stem with the blade rotated edge-up — a notable field character. Lower leaves often clasp the stem with rounded auricles. The inflorescence is a long, narrow, spike-like panicle of small pale yellow heads, each only 8–13 mm across with about ten to fourteen ray florets. After flowering the heads close and produce flattened, black, beaked achenes topped by a white pappus of fine bristles dispersed by wind.