Things Lost in the Storms: the Tallest Lettuce

This summer, we noticed a very tall and strange looking plant growing at the edge of our front hedge, by the hummingbird feeder. The little birds loved it, and they used it for shelter. They chased each other and hid among its leaves. I took a photo of the plant one day and uploaded it to one of those plant ID sites. It said it was some variety of wild lettuce.

Since it didn't appear to be toxic or invasive, and because it pleased the hummingbirds, we let it grow. This is part of my new philosophy. I used to whack everything in the yard. Now we trim a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But the rest? We let it grow. We started calling the plant "the World's Tallest Lettuce."

There were bad storms on Sunday late afternoon, and then again on Monday mid-afternoon. The one on Monday actually got us a tornado WARNING instead of a WATCH. There was rotation on a particular cloud coming up out of Warriors Mark, the warnings said: Watch out for TWISTERS!

We got bad winds and heavy rain and some pretty amazing sky talking. But I don't think we had confirmation of an actual tornado. The warnings are impressive, though, and scary. Since I used to work at Penn State, I'm still subscribed to their electronic alerts system. 

The tornado warning the system sent said that there was a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado, moving east at 20 miles per hour. It would be accompanied by half-dollar sized hail. "Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles will occur. Tree damage is likely."

Well, we didn't get any twisters that we know of, but the weather service usually takes a few days to confirm or deny. But we did have one casualty of our own, and now I'm sorry to report that our hummingbirds are heartbroken, depressed, and listless: the world's tallest lettuce went down!

Of course, we did all of the things you would imagine we should do. My husband pulled it off to the side of the driveway, out of the way of the cars. He measured it, and it came in (including the stem part, which still stands) at just a few inches under 15 feet tall.

T. Tiger and the Moose and Alex the Alligator and I went out to see, and we all oohed and aahed over how BIG it was. We couldn't tell whether the plant's salad days were over, or whether they had perhaps just begun. The critters sat on the lettuce and climbed it all the way to the top. Here was their message:

Heck no, the lettuce can't go!
This is OUR lettuce.
Because WE SAY SO!

I learned after the fact that wild varieties of lettuce like this one may have medicinal properties. In fact, some varieties of wild lettuce were used as substitutes for opium back in the days of the Pharaohs:

"Wild lettuce has been used in folk medicine for centuries as the sap is believed to have pain relieving properties. The lettuce can be traced back to ancient Egypt where hieroglyphics often depict Min, a fertility god, with the plant. It was also believed to be an aphrodisiac and a psychoactive substance in Egypt. Ancient Greeks and Romans used wild lettuce as a cure-all to treat everything from menstrual pains to disease. Wild lettuce resin was also smoked by the Hopi tribe in Arizona before sleeping because they believed that it induced vision dream states."

So there you have it. This posting is our tribute to our own wild lettuce, which we enjoyed so much. At this point, we have no plans to harvest, process, or smoke it. (But hey, who knows!) We need a soundtrack song for this photo and story, and our little group can't agree on just one, so I'm including two tunes.

This one is from the hummingbirds, who send their thanks and their regrets: Phil Collins, with You'll Be In My Heart.

This one is for the almost-twister that took down a mighty lettuce: Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, with Twisted, from the awesome movie Twister, which is a personal favorite (perhaps at least in part because I dodged twisters in Kansas City during the huge outbreak that resulted in an F5 that took out Oklahoma City in May of 1999, but I digress). The movie is amazing. The soundtrack is fantastic. Respect the wind!