The History of Lettuce
From Ancient Egypt to outer space, lettuce is a well-traveled little plant.
Lettuce is the first thing I plant in my garden. In early spring, I direct seed lettuce mix, which I can harvest after a few weeks. In the meantime, I plant starts of red and green butter, leaf, and romaine lettuces for harvest when the lettuce mix has grown bitter. Succession plantings feed me well into fall. I’m in love with fresh, homegrown lettuce! The myriad lettuces available today all emanated from a wild lettuce first recorded nearly 5,000 years ago.
An Ancient Green
Common lettuce, Lactuca sativa, has its origins in the Middle East. Egyptian wall murals of Min, the god of fertility, depict lettuce in cultivation in about 2700 B.C. The erect plant — similar to modern romaine, with a thick stem and milky sap — had sexual connotations. Min consumed lettuce as a sacred food for sexual stamina, and ordinary Egyptians used the oil of the wild seeds for medicine, cooking, and mummification. Over time, the Egyptians bred their wild-type lettuce to have leaves that were less bitter and more palatable. The cultivated plants were still tall and upright, with separate leaves rather than heads.
The Greeks learned how to grow lettuce from the Egyptians. They used it medicinally as a sedative and…
