Lactuca sativa (garden lettuce)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lactuca sativa, photographed by naturewatchwidow — fig. a naturewatchwidow, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 193571481

Lactuca sativa, photographed by carnifex — fig. b carnifex, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169601766

Lactuca sativa, photographed by Lyndsey — fig. c Lyndsey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169552555

Lactuca sativa, photographed by Nico Hernandez — fig. d Nico Hernandez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 86332400

Lactuca sativa, photographed by 葉子 — fig. e 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 46343747

Lactuca sativa, photographed by Nathan Odgers — fig. f Nathan Odgers, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152090495

Lactuca sativa, photographed by Jenny Saito — fig. g Jenny Saito, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 69085215

Lactuca sativa, photographed by Paulo Galvão — fig. h Paulo Galvão, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 135601781

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Lactuca sativa, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cape Provinces	CPP	AFRICA
Free State	OFS
Iraq	IRQ	ASIA-TEMPERATE

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 231 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-20.4 °C	-2.8 °C	18.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	19.1 °C	25.0 °C	33.0 °C
Annual rainfall	265 mm	795 mm	2,268 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	10 mm	119 mm	303 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 231 research-grade observations of Lactuca sativa that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 28 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Lactuca capitata Garsault
Lactuca capitata (L.) DC.
Lactuca crispa (L.) Roth
Lactuca dregeana DC.
Lactuca laciniata Roth
Lactuca palmata Willd.
Lactuca sativa subsp. asparagina (L.H.Bailey) Janch.
Lactuca sativa subsp. capitata (L.) Schübl. & G.Martens
Lactuca sativa subsp. crispa (L.) Schübl. & G.Martens
Lactuca sativa subsp. longifolia (Lam.) Alef.
Lactuca sativa subsp. minii Hadidi
Lactuca sativa subsp. romana Spielm. ex Schübl. & G.Martens
Lactuca sativa subsp. sativa
Lactuca sativa subsp. secalina Alef.
Lactuca sativa var. acephala Alef.
Lactuca sativa var. asparagina L.H.Bailey
Lactuca sativa var. aurescens Hegi
Lactuca sativa var. capitata L.
Lactuca sativa var. crispa L.
Lactuca sativa var. foliosa Bremer
Lactuca sativa var. integrifolia Stankov & Taliev
Lactuca sativa var. longifolia Lam.
Lactuca sativa var. pseudoscariola Schur
Lactuca sativa var. sativa

and 4 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.