Great Lettuce - Lactuca virosa

Tall plant to 2 metres, with stems often prickly below and often tinged maroon.  Upper leaves horizontal, finely prickly along the mid-rib beneath. Flowerheads in a pyramidal panicle. Achenes (i.e. ripe 'seeds') maroon to blackish.

Lactuca serriola (Prickly Lettuce)

Leaves very variable, but more often lobed, and usually maroon tinged; stem and prickly midribs also tinged maroon.  Ripe achenes ('seeds') maroon to blackish - this is the most reliable feature

The County Recorder has asked for a specimen of this plant to be retained for verification.  Photos showing stems, leaf midribs and achenes - cannot be verified from flowers only.  

Disturbed ground, roadside verges, waste places & banks of streams.

July to September.

Annual or biennial.

Widespread in central and south-eastern England, scarcer elsewhere in Britain.

Infrequent but perhaps increasing in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 14 of the 617 tetrads.