Wild Lettuce Tincture & Alcohol-Free Extract

Wild Lettuce (Lactuca virosa) is the bitter or great lettuce, a tall biennial of the daisy family, Asteraceae, native to central and southern Europe and naturalized in parts of North America along roadsides, railway banks and waste ground. In its second year it sends up a stout, often purple-spotted stem 1 to 2 meters tall with large, bluish-green, oblong leaves, prickly along the midrib beneath and clasping the stem, and a loose panicle of small pale yellow dandelion-like flower heads. Cut stems ooze a milky white latex that dries brown and bitter. We extract the dried herb.