#lettuceflowers

[seedkeeping]

If you don’t know your lettuce when it flowers, you don’t fully know your lettuce. If you know it when it goes to seed, even better! To me, rows of yellow-flowering lettuce in the morning sunshine is one of the more beautiful sights of late spring. #seedsaving #lettuceflowers https://www.instagram.com/p/Bydd8hCgCT0/?igshid=2bjan36lixy3

[seedkeeping]

Starry lettuce flowers. The aster (Latin for "star") family includes sunflowers, dahlias, echinacea, calendula, zinnias, artichokes, chicory, chrysanthemum, daisies, fleabane, dandelions, and on and on. But it is lettuce that reminds me most of a starry sky - thousands of small suns that won't be eclipsed until they fade to fluff. #philadelphiadutchbutter #heirloomlettuce #lettuceflowers #asteraceae #aster (at Delaware County, Pennsylvania)

[seedkeeping]

Lettuce seed season starts today with this first feather! As for the second photo (you may need to upgrade your Instagram to see it), I try so hard to capture the beauty and hope of thousands of blooming lettuce flowers, and nothing quite does it like having the built-in, hopeful, seed nerd filter. #lettuceseed #lettuceflower #lettuceflowers #lactucasativa #landiswinterlettuce #seedkeeping #seednerd #lettucefeather (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania)

[duendearts]

Cichorium endivia © 2021 Orlando Gustilo. All rights reserved. Who knew that frizzy lettuce or curly endive, actually a chicory, had these beautiful purple flowers that arrive in late summer? #flowerphotography #lettuceflowers #saladgreens #gardenphotography #gardeningvegetables #gardeningisfun #photography https://www.instagram.com/p/CR63kS8i-u2/?utm_medium=tumblr

[seedkeeping]

Look at these perfect lettuce flowers! They pollinate themselves, each flower housing both male and female parts. What you see in this picture is 16 flowers or “florets” making up one inflorescence - this is not just one flower. Here, their 16 stigmas have already pushed through the 16 tube-like pollen-lined anther crowns (darker yellow) and have branched at their tips, bending back towards the sides of the style to make contact with more pollen. I’m guessing that the fuzz on the sides are indeed pollen grains. If you wanted to breed lettuce, apparently you would gently spray off the pollen from the stigma with a very fine stream of water and add pollen from a different individual (do I have all this right, @wild_garden_seed?) The flower will be open for only one day - sometimes for just half an hour in the morning. Seeds ripen 11-14 days after the flower opens - in this case there will likely be 16 seeds, each attached to a feathery umbrella, like how dandelions and elecampane do it (they are all in the same family). In other news, lettuce was first cultivated in ancient Egypt as far back as 2680 BC, and is depicted in tombs and wall paintings. The first form seemed to be the romaine type. It was later grown and eaten by Romans and Greeks, and you and me. #lettuceflowers #lactucasativa #seedsaving #inflorescence #stigmas #africanfood (Thank to “Insect Pollination Of Cultivated Crop Plants” by S.E. McGregor, USDA originally published 1976)

[seedkeeping]

Happily adrift in a sea of blooming lettuce! Anticipating gallons of the gorgeous white-seeded Landis Winter Lettuce :) Order now for fall planting! I planted this patch in early December and harvested beautiful buttery heads from late winter to early spring. I’ll plant more anytime beginning in September. #landiswinterlettuce #lettuceflowers #lettuceseed #lactucasativa

[seedkeeping]

Rothenbrunnen Rotkorn, or Red Spelt from Rothenbrunnen, Switzerland, elegantly looks over a bed of Eva Snader's Lettuce flowers. Today we put our first tray of dried pea seeds in the dining room to fully dry out. Seed harvest season is starting! #roughwoodseedcollection #rothenbrunnen #rothenbrunnenrotkorn #spelt #redspelt #evasnadersbrownlettuce #evasnaderslettuce #lettuceflowers #lactucasativa #seedsaving #seedkeeping