wild lettuce id

[cactuscarl]

Hi guys n girls just wondering if anyone can id this for me it looks like pics I've seen of wild lettuce but I'm not sure

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m488/cactuscarl1/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG20110824_001.jpg

And another suspect

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m488/cactuscarl1/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG20110824_002.jpg

Cheers

Edited August 23, 2011 by cactuscarl

[DarkSpark]

First one, 90% certain, second one... not too sure but looks VERY similar.

The shaping of the leaf is definitely correct. Do they bleed white sap when you snap branches or leaves ?

[Khala]

I'm just chucking this in there, I have lots of plants with purple stalks that reach under a meter, hollow with lots of white sap exuding, and the same leaf formation.

Do you think they are L. virosa?

Cheers, sorry for the lil hijack

[mud]

I'm constantly wanting to i.d plants that looks similar to these..

anyone know a good book, or one stop resource?

[gerbil]

not really, odds and ends everywhere, there's limitations to contexts.

The most recent field guide for the south east aus is, weeds of the south east 2nd ed which has just been released. Though it covers huge number of species so it's very brief. You generally need to multi reference with any ID, you only get out what you put in...

you need to utilise your local authorities resources, like cma's, councils, water authorities, state environment, agri. dept. etc, for localised and broader weed / veg. information/lists.

websites like weeds.org.au might be of use, then wiki and all that

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonchus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactuca

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteraceae

other than that it's all standard broad spectrum botanical and flower knowledge to study.

[mud]

geez, thanks Gerbil.

That's some nice succinctness worthy of stickiness

imo.

so weeds south east aus

wouldn't have very good images either?

[gerbil]

sample pages can be viewed here to communicate layout/extent of species description and adjoining photos.

http://www.weedinfo.com.au/bk_weedsosea.html

I'm never happy with photos in ID books, usually they are absolute crap and essentially useless, a 20m field shot does nothing for proper intricate diagnostics that can realistically be communicated by photos if enough effort and thought is put into it. ID books are a constant source of frustration, love hate relationship, it's a good comparision to our societies functioning, put in all this effort and end up with a half arse product that doesn't work most the time.

This book seems to be one of the better ones both in info and photos (yet it's not without it's downfalls too), by brief i don't mean bad, it's just that it's constraints don't make it an encyclopedia. Realistically it would be good if a single encyclopedia was created and updated, then contexted field guides spun off that, don't hold ya breath, our society does not work together...

In terms of Sonchus in this book, i feel the photos have fallen well short, but it's just a field guide to point you in a direction.

[cactuscarl]

Hey thanks for the help guys i was pretty sure they were some type wild lettuce I've been trying to id it for while but the white sap kept throwing me off i thought it was poison lol

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

The 2nd one I throw in salads when I'm out picking my lettuce. I've always assumed its some type of wild lettuce, young shoots are peppery

[Francois le Danque]

i know this is a bit old but...neither of those are lactuca. i am 100% certain. the first one is just your regular dandelion thing, the second is some other useless thing. very descriptive i know, but definitely definitely not L virosa or L serriola. the latter is everywhere here in melbourne. once you see it you realise it's absolutely everywhere. the key thing to look for is the row of soft spines under the leaf running along the middle.

here is serriola whole plant

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=lactuca+serriola&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=667&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=Gs3j4seUpQCauM:&imgrefurl=http://prgdb.cbm.fvg.it/organism.php%3Fid%3D313&docid=CSSFsoPNKYYn3M&w=1024&h=768&ei=KR1mTpaGKefRmAW38qWLCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=649&vpy=99&dur=3235&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=142&ty=78&page=1&tbnh=149&tbnw=212&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0

here are the spines up close

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=lactuca+serriola&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=667&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=SKZpfT8S09bMHM:&imgrefurl=http://www.robsplants.com/plants/LactuSerri&docid=eUfRUQQsQ6_ulM&w=313&h=360&ei=KR1mTpaGKefRmAW38qWLCg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=286&page=1&tbnh=173&tbnw=158&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0&tx=89&ty=64

and here is virosa.

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=lactuca+virosa&hl=en&gbv=2&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbnid=DfeFQaVlucaVFM:&imgrefurl=http://www.herbalistics.com.au/shop/product_info.php%3Fproducts_id%3D197%26osCsid%3Dxaupeplryaj&docid=WYb4rIIL2mv4SM&w=350&h=311&ei=OR1mTtKaEI_LmAXVmfWgCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=894&vpy=189&dur=3012&hovh=212&hovw=238&tx=143&ty=144&page=1&tbnh=157&tbnw=177&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:0

it's sort of similar to the second thing you posted, but note the non-serrate leaves. long and rounder at the end, like a baseball bat.

[cactuscarl]

Not wild lettuce, that's no good it is defintly the same plant as at least a couple of the images on Google but there are about 20 different plants that come up

Thanks

[ctoan]

Theres forests of the first photo where i live ive always looked fro the more oval leaves for virosa though? that being said ive never picked any wild lettuce before, and it seems difficult to research due to the mixing up of species on the internet.