Wild Lettuce Traditional Geocache

Wild Lettuce is an amzing giant of a plant. You have to walk a bit on the Jim Schug trail to find it and the cache.

Wild Lettuce

Lactuca canadensis is a species of wild lettuce known by the common names Canada lettuce, Canada wild lettuce, tall lettuce, and Florida blue lettuce. Its true native range is not clear, but it is considered to be a native of the eastern and central parts of North America. It naturalized in the western part of the continent as well as in Eurasia.

Lactuca canadensis is a generally biennial herb in the daisy family growing from a taproot to maximum heights of 50–200 cm (19.5–78.5 in) or more. The leaves are deeply lobed and occasionally toothed. The top of the stem bears an inflorescence with many flower heads, each up to 1 cm (0.5 in) wide when open. The heads have many pale yellow ray florets but no disc florets. The fruit is a dark-colored achene about half a centimeter (0.2 inches) long with a white pappus.

Wild Lettuce grows as a tall, erect biennial, reaching up to 8 feet high.

Stems are leafy, smooth, light green or reddish green, sometimes have purple streaks, and contain a milky juice and are unbranched below the floral array.

Leaves vary considerably, from entire to toothed, to pinnately divided and have a narrow unstalked base or a clasping base. Larger leaves tend to have deep pinnate lobes, smaller upper leaves maybe entire with a sessile base. The leaf edges are not spiny, teeth are widely spaced and the underside of the midrib vein will have fine short hair.

Floral Array: Flowers appear in a loosely branched panicle that is long and cone shaped and contains many flower heads. It is late flowering and the inflorescence will have buds, flowers and seed heads at the same time.

The flowers, resembling dandelions, are small (under 3/8 inch) with 15 to 20+ yellowish bisexual ray flowers (a few plants have bluish rays but that is the exception); flower heads have involucres campanulate to cylindric in shape, longer than wide. The involucre has small green bracts (calyculi) which reduce in size and grade into the phyllaries which are in several series with the outer ones shorter than the linear inner ones. These reflex when the head is in fruit. The receptacle of the flower is considered 'epaleate' (that is, lacking paleae - which are small bracts that subtend each floret). The filaments and anthers of the five stamens of each ray flower are tightly appressed around the style. Each flower rapidly absorbs moisture and fades away the same day it opens - said to be 'deliquescent'.

Seeds are a brown, oblong-oval, dry cypselae (seeds in composite plants that resemble an achene), with one noticeable nerve line on the side (although they may be up to 3 on some), a long thin beak, and are transported by the wind via a tuft of white bristles (pappus).

Lactuca canadensis - Wild Lettuce, Canada Lettuce. Tall plant with milky sap and yellow flowers. Leaves usually lobed, especially the lower leaves, but that is not always the case. Some authorities recognize multiple varieties, primarily based on leaf shape. Similar to non-native species Lactuca serrata, but that plant has prickles on the foliage.

Akin to garden lettuce, the young leaves are edible either in salads or cooked; slightly bitter. 

FYI: There’s an Alien Wild Lettuce, that has opiate qualities. Lactuca virosa, Wild opium (also called wild opium lettuce, opium lettuce, wild lettuce, bitter lettuce, L. Virosa) is not an opium or an opiate (but has similar effects i.e. painkilling, but won't get you addicted), it is an ethnobotanical. It is most commonly smoked or filtered into a tea.

I expected yellow flowers when I bent one down for a picture. I am surprised they seem white. Maybe that's the bluish version mentioned in the above text?

The tied in cache is a camoed "micro" pill bottle, the "Push hard to open and close" kind. Please BYOP and no tweezers. There's a rolled log, rubber band and plastic bag as usual. I hope you keep track of it all, so you can put it back the way you found it. Please report if anything is missing or otherwise not right.