Lactuca serriolaL.

prickly lettuce

WFO wfo-0000015140 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Lactuca serriola, photographed by Mark Apgar
fig. a Mark Apgar, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205646485
Lactuca serriola, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. b Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205622829
Lactuca serriola, photographed by Nico
fig. c Nico, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205509474
Lactuca serriola, photographed by Jeff Clark
fig. d Jeff Clark, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205260233
Lactuca serriola, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. e Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203425348
Lactuca serriola, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. f Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203424797
Lactuca serriola, photographed by markhl
fig. g markhl, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201674881
Lactuca serriola, photographed by Zinogre
fig. h Zinogre, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 200732763

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.

Flowering n = 1,747 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 1,747 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 39 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 albicaulis Boiss.
  • Lactuca altaica Fisch. & Mey.
  • Lactuca altaica Fisch. & C.A.Mey.
  • Lactuca augustana All.
  • Lactuca coriacea Sch.Bip.
  • Lactuca dubia Jord.
  • Lactuca elata Salisb.
  • Lactuca integrata (Gren. & Godr.) A.Nelson
  • Lactuca kemaliya Yıld.
  • Lactuca latifolia Gilib.
  • Lactuca saligna var. robusta Fisch. & C.A.Mey.
  • Lactuca sativa var. angustana Irish ex Bremer
  • Lactuca sativa var. angustana L.H.Bailey
  • Lactuca scariola L.
  • Lactuca scariola f. scariola
  • Lactuca scariola subsp. augustana (All.) Arcang.
  • Lactuca scariola subsp. integrata (Gren. & Godr.) Piper
  • Lactuca scariola subsp. scariola
  • Lactuca scariola unranked hortensis Bisch.
  • Lactuca scariola unranked sylvestris (Lam.) Bisch.
  • Lactuca scariola var. augustana (All.) Lindem.
  • Lactuca scariola var. dubia (Jord.) Rouy
  • Lactuca scariola var. integrata Gren. & Godr.
  • Lactuca scariola var. integrifolia Schur

and 15 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

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