Prickly Lettuce or Wild Lettuce
This plant looks like a prickly garden lettuce gone to seed. All parts of it exude a white sap when pierced. It is found in vacant lots, car parks and degraded pastures.
Prickly Lettuce was once regarded as almost as useful as Opium. It is not a narcotic so therefore not addictive. It can give you a glorious sense of well being , take it when you feel irritable or nervous to calm down.
How to Use
- Gather new leaves in spring before they are too spiky or bitter, just nibble or add to salads.
- Cut off tops of plants in spring and and allow white sap to ooze out of stems, leave until you can roll it into rubbery ballls, leave to harden in the sun and store in airtight container.
- Infuse one ball of sap for 10 minutes in boiling water. It will be bitter even when you sweeten with honey. Remember bitter in the mouth means a healthy heart and digestive system. The gall bladder function is well enhanced by bitter herbs. So eat the odd Prickly lettuce leaf or Dandelion leaf growing at your feet.
Once you are hooked on bitters you feel something missing when you neglect them in your diet.
