THE FOLKLORE OF PLANTS: Lettuce

Lisa Karen Miller

          Beatrix Potter has Peter Rabbit falling asleep in Mr. McGregor’s garden after consuming too much lettuce. The soporific (sleep- inducing) effects of Latuca sativa had been known long before she took up pen and brush to create her enchanting children’s stories.  

          Lactuca virosa, wild lettuce, or sleepwort, has even stronger sleep-inducing or narcotic qualities. Its bitter milky juice was often dried into a gum, lending it another common name – opium lettuce.

          Evil spirits were once thought to lurk in lettuce beds. In the language of flowers, this familiar garden vegetable has the rather unfortunate meaning of coldness, even coldheartedness.  When Adonis died, Venus threw herself on a lettuce bed to cool her desires. Contrarily, one of its possible powers is that of an aphrodisiac.

          In Surrey, England a folk saying was “O’er much lettuce in the garden will stop a young wife’s bearing.” They believed lettuce promoted chastity and sterility in the household.  Women who wanted to put off childbearing would plant an abundance of lettuce. Elizabethan women who wanted no more children feasted on lettuce seed. A pregnant woman should never step on the plant, unless the pregnancy is unwanted.

          Native to the Mediterranean, it is one of the oldest known vegetables on earth. Min, the Egyptian god of fertility, consumed lettuce as a sacred food for sexual stamina. The erect plant, with a thick stem and a milky sap, had sexual connotations.  We can see by this that the Doctrine of Signatures, the belief that plants give an outward sign of their intended use, is ancient indeed.

          How the message got switched from virility to virginity in its journey across Europe is anyone’s guess.

          The Greeks learned its cultivation from Egyptians.  They often served it as a salad at the beginning of a meal to aid digestion. They also continued to cultivate sweeter and tastier varieties.

          The Greeks, in turn, handed their knowledge on to the Romans, who gave it the name Lactuca, meaning milk. This passed into English as the word lettuce.  The Romans kept the tradition of a pre-dinner salad for digestion, and added a post-dinner salad as a sleep aid.

          A charming method of love divination is to write your beloved’s (or the one you are hoping will love you back) name in the soil.  Plant the name with lettuce seeds.  If they sprout and thrive, so will your love. Some girls would plant several names, then choose the man with the best lettuce.  

          Let’s face it: stranger things have been done in the name of love.

© Copyright 2023 Lisa Karen Miller