• Flowers: Numerous, small, about 1\4 in. across, involucre, cylindric, rays pale yellow; followed by abundant, soft, bright white pappus; the heads growing in loose, branching, terminal clusters.
• Stem:Smooth, 3 to 10 ft. high, leafy up to the flower panicle; juice milky.
• Leaves: Upper ones lance-shaped; lower ones often 1 ft. long, wavy-lobed, often pinnatifid, taper pointed, narrowed into flat petioles.
• Preferred Habitat:Moist, open ground; roadsides.
• Flowering Season:June - November
• Distribution:Georgia, westward to Arkansas, north to the British Possessions.

Few gardeners allow the table lettuce (saliva) to go to seed; but as it is next of kin to this common wayside weed, it bears a strong likeness to it in the loose, narrow panicles of cream-colored flowers, followed by more charming, bright, white little pompons. When the milky juice has been thickened (lactucarium), it is sometimes used as a substitute for opium by regular practitioners - a fluid employed by the plants themselves, it is thought, to discourage creatures from feasting at their expense. Certain caterpillars, however, eat the leaves readily; but offer lettuce or poppy foliage to grazing cattle, and they will go without food rather than touch it.