Over the last couple of years I’ve been trialling celtuce in the community garden (also known as stem or asparagus lettuce / stilksalat). I’ve decided that this is a vegetable well worth growing for preparation as a salad or in various cooked dishes. This is a vegetable developed from the same species as lettuces (Lactuca sativa, var. angustana) but bred for the thickened flowering stem rather than the leaves and harvested up to flowers appearing. Peeling away the outer layer the “flesh” is free from coarse fibers with a crispy texture when eaten raw and is also mild tasting. The cluster of leaves at the top of the stem can also be used if harvested early enough. During a visit from Rick Akerboom of Elleville Planter (see https://www.ellevillevekster.no), who gave me seed of one of the 4 varieties I grew this summer, he prepared a simple but delicious salad from the diced stem with a dressing of olive oil, soy sauce and roasted sesame seeds (the same way we prepare perennial udo (Aralia cordata) shoots in spring and similar in texture too! 
Celtuce is also known as Chinese lettuce as this Mediterranean species apparently originated from the borders of Tibet and is still popular in China (known as woju or wosun). Get inspired by these delicious looking dishes from Chinese web pages:
https://tinyurl.com/28dp3m2zis
What really convinced me that this was a useful vegetable was the fact that I was also able to harvest seed this summer. Being able to grow my own seed is most important for me. This is unlike ordinary lettuce which is difficult to be self-sufficient in seed with, as varieties that bolt (go to seed) are less useful as a salad crop. Some varieties produce a lot of leaf but go to seed so late that seed do not mature but others bolt early in our long days and produce little crop. I’ve yet to find a variety that balances these two traits. Celtuce on the other hand has been selected to bolt as it’s the flower stem that is the main product.
I had four varieties this summer – Celtuce from Chiltern Seeds, Celtuce from Holland (Rick A), Asparagus Lettuce from the Organic Gardening Catalogue and Chinese Keule (sold by Norwegian Company Solhatt). It was interesting that Chinese Keule had thicker and lower stems and was available earlier than the others.
Celtuce probably arrived in Europe around 1900 and is mentioned in Vilmorin’s The Vegetable Garden from 1920 (picture) alongside perennial relative Lactuca perennis which I’m also trialling this year.
Next year I plan to obtain more varieties from gene banks and commercial sources and do a larger trial.
Tag Archives: asteraceae
Asteraceae: valuable autumn flowering edientomentals!
When giving talks I like to renew myself and talk about something different each time. For my talk in Copenhagen at the Future Heirloom event last weekend I focussed during part of my presentation on edimentals in the Asteraceae or Compositae (the aster or daisy family / kurvplantefamilien). These are tbe edible perennial vegetables that are most obvious in the autumn garden and often underutilised by chefs in the west. Visiting the World Garden a few days before my talk on 17th October, I gathered flowers from all the flowering Asteraceae and here they are with names:
Most are used for their tasty spring shoots and leaves, used cooked and raw, and most have a characteristic fragrant taste / aroma loved in the Far East (as also Chrysanthemum tea is popular and a refreshing accompaniment to spicy dishes). Aster scaber and Ligularia fischeri are nowadays both cultivated in a big way as “sannamul” in Korea and even exported to Korean markets around the world. Young shoots of other Aster sp. are foraged in Asia as is big-leaf Aster, Aster macrophyllus, in North America. Also from North America, cutleaf coneflower Rudbeckia laciniata or sochan was a popular vegetable for the Cherokee first people and in recent years has, maybe not unsurprisingly become a commercial vegetable in Korea. Annual shungiku or chopsuey greens Glebionis coronaria hails from the Mediterranean but is today an important vegetable in the Far East! Others currently in flower are best known as root crops, including (in the picture) Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) and Dahlia. Yacon (Polymnia sonchifolia) is also autumn flowering but doesn’t manage to flower here (is moved indoors to flower and bulk up). The final flower in the picture is marigold Calendula officinalis, whose culinary use includes decorating and flavouring salads, soups and other dishes.
Late flowering also means that the Asteraceae are also particularly important for a range of insect pollinators like hoverflies, drone flies and bees as can be seen in the pictures below, all taken in the World Garden:
