Opium Lettuce Serrated Lactuca Serriola Seeds

$6.00

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Opium Lettuce Serrated Lactuca Serriola Seeds

Pack of 100+ home grown organic seeds!

I used to have a heck of a lot of trouble sorting these seeds, but I have it sussed now.
The key is to grow LOTS, and be very wasteful when winnowing them, letting seeds and trash fall onto the new beds. This means super clean seeds for you guys, and an autosown and well mulched field for me.

From planting to sprouting normally takes from one to 4 weeks and is weather dependent, so don’t be in a panic if it takes a little while! These are good fresh seeds, and it’s well worth the wait. Trust me.

It grows as a common roadside weed in many places both here and overseas, and is very often mistaken for the nearly chemically identical as Lactuca virosa.

The only reasons I can see that it’s not a more common commercial product, is it’s more resinous than the traditional Lactuca virosa, and the height of plants is more irregular, which makes machine harvesting much harder.

With this stuff, you have to cut and harvest by hand, which is what you will no doubt be doing if you buy the seeds from me anyway.

Here is some data I found online>>>

“Lactucin and it’s derivatives lactucopicrin and 11β,13-dihydrolactucin, which are characteristic bitter sesquiterpene lactones of Lactuca virosa and Lactuca serriola, and were evaluated for analgesic and sedative properties in mice.

The compounds showed analgesic effects at doses of 15 and 30 mg/kg in the hot plate test similar to that of ibuprofen, used as a standard drug, at a dose of 30 mg/kg.

The analgesic activities of the compounds at a dose of 30 mg/kg in the tail-flick test were comparable to that of ibuprofen given at a dose of 60 mg/kg.

Lactucopicrin appeared to be the most potent analgesic of the three tested compounds. Lactucin and lactucopicrin, but not 11β,13-dihydrolactucin, also showed sedative properties in the spontaneous locomotor activity test.

When a stem or leaf from a “Wild Lettuce” plant is broken or cut, it will bleed a thick milky sap. The dried sap is often referred to as Lettuce Opium, though it contains no opiates. This sap can be extracted many ways, but the most common is by soaking plant material in alcohol. After several weeks, the plant material is filtered out. This extract is usually called Lactucarium. The usual way of consuming Lactucarium is by dissolving a few drops into tea. Smoking is said to produce similar effects”

Very very bitter due to the alkaloids it contains, but it makes quite a relaxing tea when used in moderation.

It’s an easy to grow, looks really cool, and it is edible in a pinch as after all its just a wild type of lettuce.
The leaves can be used as a pot herb  or stir fry vegetable, but being super bitter it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and being a medicinal herb it is important to use in moderation.
Excessive use is said to cause issues with urination and lower sex drive in men.

Often called by the now defunct synonyms Lactuca albicaulis, Lactuca altaica, Lactuca altaica, Lactuca augustana, Lactuca coriacea, Lactuca dubia, Lactuca integrata, Lactuca latifolia, Lactuca saligna var. robusta, Lactuca scariola, Lactuca scariola subsp. augustana, Lactuca scariola subsp. integrata,
Lactuca scariola var. integrata, Lactuca scariola var. integrifolia, Lactuca scariola subsp. scariola, Lactuca scariola var. scariola, Lactuca scariola f. scariola, Lactuca serriola subsp. integrifolia, Lactuca serriola subsp. serriola, Lactuca serriola var. serriola, Lactuca serriola f. serriola, Lactuca sylvestris, Lactuca tephrocarpa, Lactuca verticalis, and the common names, China lettuce, compass plant, horse thistle, milk thistle, prickly lettuce, whip thistle, wild lettuce, wild opium, compass plant, horse thistle, scarole, wild lettuce, lettuce opium, and no doubt a dozen others too.

It has a really interesting history of alternative uses and is a prized medicinal herb used for various forms of pain relief all around the world.
100+ seeds is a heck of a lot of plants, especially as they are so useful!

Grown by us organically, no nasties, no chems, no problems!!!