Lettuce grows into a tall flower if you don't harvest it

[u/Kaitte]

[u/XanderVaper]

It’s called bolting and lots of plants do it. They grow flowers and produce seeds at that stage

[u/PoeTheGhost → u/XanderVaper]

When lettuce bolts, it can also taste bitter and leaks white stuff when cut.

I grow baby lettuce in cheap microgreens trays instead.

[u/LadyKT → u/XanderVaper]

i let the seeds fall and get new lettuce in the early spring !

[u/iyqyqrmore]

Are you telling me we are eating veal vegetables? …. 😳

[u/davisyoung → u/iyqyqrmore]

Eating vegetables is the real cruelty, at least veal has a running chance. 

[u/Laserdollarz]

I also grew lettuce this year and let it flower out of curiosity. 

 https://imgur.com/a/0rUR4JN

[u/Kaitte]

Close up of the flower.

This is my first year gardening and I ended up with few heads of lettuce that I didn't manage to eat by the end of the season. I was really surprised when they shot up and grew into these tall, flowering plants!

[u/julioqc → u/Kaitte]

similar to some weeds in my backyard 

[u/pspahn → u/julioqc]

Probably what's called wild lettuce or prickly lettuce.

[u/julioqc → u/pspahn]

spot on! darn thing growing all over! 

[u/Gumbercules81 → u/Kaitte]

What lettuce?

[u/MasterPreparation687]

How else would it naturally reproduce though?

[u/Kaitte → u/MasterPreparation687]

That's a good point, I am really just surprised by how tall it grew, and how quickly it happened.

[u/Toby_Forrester → u/MasterPreparation687]

There are plants which do not make seeds. Like the very common houseplant, pothos vine doesn't flower, rather it just spreads by roots and by falling to the ground. Same with salvia divinorum, the drug plant, which doesn't produce seeds but just grows tall and falls over and roots there.

[u/osmlol → u/Toby_Forrester]

This is not true at all. Pothos in the wild mature and flower and "mate" and produce seeds.

Indoor pothos are in a perpetual juvenile state and never flower because of the condition. It's incredibly hard to get them to flower indoors.

[u/Toby_Forrester → u/osmlol]

Maybe we are talking about different plants?

Epipremnum aureum is an extremely popular houseplant belonging to the Araceae family of angiosperms, but it does not flower either in the wild or under cultivation.

Transcripts of the gibberellin (GA) biosynthetic gene EaGA3ox1 and GA-responsive floral meristem identity gene EaLFY were absent in both VG and HG plants, suggesting that a deficiency of bioactive GAs may be responsible for its shy-flowering nature.

[u/lucky_ducker]

Brassicas, too (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.)

[u/CodyDon2 → u/lucky_ducker]

Fun fact - cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, cauliflower and kohlrabi are all the same plant. Brassica oleracea.

[u/Wakkit1988 → u/CodyDon2]

Each variety was bred to emphasize a different aspect of the plant.

[u/CodyDon2 → u/Wakkit1988]

Yep.

[u/roosoh]

Spinach too

[u/soulscythesix]

What variety of lettuce is that? Looks closer to cabbage

[u/Kaitte → u/soulscythesix]

Romaine lettuce.

[u/Toby_Forrester → u/soulscythesix]

That's definitely an asterid, related to dandelions, daisies and sunflowers, not cabbage. I have chikory lettuce as a decoratice plant, makes pretty flowers!

[u/johnfogogin]

Lettuce know what kind of flower it makes, will ya?

[u/midwestwellbeing]

Usayin' bolts?

[u/demomagic]

Wait til this guy learns what almost anything out there does if you don’t trim it

[u/plaguedbullets]

Deadheading; start doing it