Facts about Lettuce
The United States is the largest producer of lettuce in the world, with most production occurring in California and Arizona (Katz and Weaver 2005).
The term lettuce also is used to refer to the edible, succulent leaves of L. sativa, which commonly are eaten raw in salads, but also may be eaten cooked.
Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is a temperate annual or biennial plant most often grown as a leaf vegetable.
Ecologically, the wild and cultivated forms of lettuce provide food for diverse animals, including insects (such as the larvae of some Lepidoptera), rabbits, and deer.
capitata), which can be divided further into butterhead and crisphead (iceberg); romaine or cos lettuce (L. sativa var.
Lettuce is considered to be a poor source of nutrients (Bender and Bender 2005).
Lettuce also is used in folk medicine to treat such ailments as coughs, nervousness, tension, and pain (Katz and Weaver 2003).
Herbst (2001) recognizes as the four general lettuce classifications butterhead, crisphead,', leaf, and romaine, omitting the stem or asparagus lettuce.
Some Libyans are descended from marriages of Turkish soldiers to Libyan women.
The oil is pumped from the Sangachal Terminal close to Baku, via Tbilisi the capital of Georgia, to Ceyhan a port on the south-eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey.
Lettuce is the common term for any plants of the genus Lactuca of the flowering plant family Asteraceae (or, alternatively, Compositae), and especially refers to plants of the commercially important species Lactuca sativa.
Among the antioxidant compounds in lettuce are 0-beta-carotene (a precursor to vitamin A) and anthocyanin (which gives the red color in some varieties of lettuce)(Katz and Weaver 2003).
Lettuce is a source of antioxidants, which are considered to have anti-carcinogenic properties.
There also is some medicinal use attributed to lettuce, including ingredients considered useful as a sleep inducer and sedative.
The more bitter lettuces and the ones with pigmented leaves contain antioxidants.
Lettuce belongs to the Asteraceae (or Compositae) family, which is known as the aster, daisy, or sunflower family.