Lactuca indica
species of plant
Lactuca indica, Indian lettuce, is a species of plant in the tribe Cichorieae within the family Asteraceae. It is native to western China (Xinjiang, Tibet), the Himalayas, and southwest Asia, as far west as Turkey. It is widely introduced elsewhere, even as far as east Africa, and is thought to be an archaeophyte in Japan, brought in with rice cultivation.
Lactuca indica is a biennial herb, growing from a taproot to at least 40 cm tall and often reaching 2 m. Its flowers have white to pale yellow ray florets with yellower centers. The narrowness of the leaf blades and the degree of spikiness of leaf lobes varies greatly by region.
It is cultivated (or rather, its growth is encouraged) as fodder for rabbits, pigs, poultry and even fish in Asia. Its young leaves can be, and are, consumed as a leaf vegetable in salads like other dandelions. It is also used in traditional medicines as an aid to digestion.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lactuca indica” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4236769. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lactuca indica” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.