LETTUCE

Lettuce can divided into four types:
Heading Crisphead Lettuce, or cabbage lettuce, are the "Lakes" varieties: Great Lakes (uniform and widely adapted), Pennlakes (large slow bolting), Imperial types and all the Iceberg types (the original Icebergs had a red tinting on their leaves). They have a coarse mid-rib, quite brittle foliage and a tight white heart. They are slow bolters in hot weather.
May King has white seeds and is light-green with red tips. Webb's Wonderful, which has a fine distinct flavour, is very large and is slow to bolt. These are summer varieties with an English origin that are now offered in the Seed Savers' newsletter by the subscribers themselves.
Heading Butterhead Lettuce are smaller than the crisphead with a softer heart and soft-textured leaves: Tennis Ball and Tom Thumb are butterhead varieties that indicate their small size. Their inner leaves blanch to a golden-yellow and they include the small mignonettes, which are suitable for warmer climates. Other varieties are Matchless and All Year Round (A.Y.R.).
Harold and Alyce from Toukley, near Sydney, have kept A.Y.R. since the 1950's. Harold writes:
“In my opinion this lettuce is the nicest one ever bred. It is smaller than the Mignonette lettuce, is a quick grower, with brown or bronze tinges on the upper edges, and when it forms a kind of rosette that becomes firm, it is ready for cutting.
Each leaf is rounded without the usual crimping of the edges, and it has a wide crisp rib, that crunches like celery, and is juicy and sweet. The inner leaves at this stage are not blanched white, but attractively yellow. They will not bolt, if planted before Christmas.”
Romaine Lettuce or Cos (cylindrical) with an upright growth and rather stiff leaves that can be ear-shaped: Rabbit's Ear, Deer's Ear and Pig's Ear. They can be either hearting or open-hearted. A brown-tipped Romaine lettuce was sent to Seed Savers in 1987 from Proserpine, Queensland. The new leaves are green and the outer leaves are brownish red. It is heat-resistant due to this red pigment which filters out some of the heat from the sun. Hundreds of packets of this lettuce have been distributed.
Looseleaf Lettuce, also called Perpetual or Continuous, has more or less finely cut or frilled leaves like the Oak Leaf types. It usually has a large spreading habit. Plant in a warm position, such as along a north facing wall, to gather heat. Ron and Myrtle Charteris, the seed bankers of Brisbane Organic Growers Group, have strains adapted to central Queensland’s arid climate, such as the Darwin Lettuce which forms three heads that can be harvested separately.
Because of their popularity and wide distribution, lettuces have been brought to Australia by many cultures. Greeks and Italians introduced, respectively, the Cos and Romaine. The Chinese brought numerous varieties, including a large, spreading, looseleaf type with red tinges that came in 1860 to the Ballarat region. The seeds of this lettuce were given to Bruce Hedge by an old lady who had kept the lettuce in her garden for a very long time. Bruce sent a sample to Seed Savers who christened it Gold Rush lettuce. It has been distributed to seed savers and is now available from Eden Seeds.
Sydney's Henry Doubleday Research Association keep a Laotian lettuce, a remnant of French colonial days, recently brought into Australia by boat people.