Plant ID - from my food garden

[JHZR2]

We live in the Garden State, and have some of the best soil to grow plants in. We have a very productive organic garden that yields all our vegetable and blueberry/strawberry needs for many months. We try to let our plants go to seed so that we can have more, free, the following year.

One is confusing me - can you ID it?

My first thought was that it was broccoli (which we had grown a few years back but much of it booted when we got a hot spell). But there were no crowns, these plants were heavy stalks right out of the ground.

The flowers look like broccoli though. They are growing in a spot that I hadn't tilled/planted this year. They are growing in an area where around 20 young lettuce plants had been growing from seed dropped last year,

The leaves are very bitter. Whe the plants were much smaller, I accidentally mistook one for kale, and ate some in my salad. I'm not sick or dead, so I guess it was fine, I ate most of it despite the bitterness.

Any ideas?

 

[Rolla07]

Broccoli rabe (rapini) is wat it looks like

 

[torino351]

i have broccoli in my garden right now and it doesn't look anything like that. the leaves are darker and more round shaped. but maybe it is a different variety.

 

[heynow]

Looks a bit like rhubarb?

 

[chevrofreak]

Originally Posted By: Rolla07
Broccoli rabe (rapini) is wat it looks like


Agreed

 

[dave123]

Lettuce that went to seed

 

[Shannow]

Seed head look brassica to me...at that point, which roundup ready weed could it be ???

They all cross pollinate.

 

[Silk]

Yeah, I'd say non heading lettuce gone to seed, I let mine do that every year.

 

[rjundi]

Looks a bit like lettuce my wife typically lets go to seed.

She keeps bees and is always concerned about their food even though we live 2 miles from a flower farm(in their range).

 

[Pop_Rivit]

Simple. It's lettuce that has bolted.

The plant has also started making sesquiterpene lactones, which will make the leaves extremely bitter. I suppose you could try to pick the seeds off, but at $1/packet at the farm store it's not worth most peoples' time. You'd be better off with one of the varieties that is slower to bolt rather than letting this go to seed and continue to propagate.

Bolting is a genetic trait, and there are varieties that have been bred to bolt slower.

 

[Kuato]

My sister's a landscape architect with a very good knowledge of plants; she says,

"If the leaves are very bitter it could be arugula, there's several varieties of the stuff and usually when the seeds come in the plant gets very tough....could also be a hybrid of several different types of lettuce if that's where a bunch was planted..sometimes things like that with little tiny seeds will hybridize and make their own thing..cool forum!"

 

[JHZR2]

The bolting doesn't concern me at all. The lettuce, when tiny, was highly bitter. We have never grown arugula in our garden, so the hybrid idea is plausible.

Bolting had nothing to do with it, the taste was there when the plants were tiny. Made me almost think I ate a weed...

We have more then enough red leaf and spinach to last the season, so these plants came out today. Still would be interested to ID the lettuce type. We have only ever grown red leaf and romaine, though we also grow spinach and kale.

Looking at the leaf edges, I wonder if we made a hybrid kale lettuce! I did keep a couple plants in for "fun".

 

[Rolla07]

Search rapini in google and look at pictures. You might be able to see if its similar.

 

[JHZR2]

Some of those rapini photos are pretty compelling. But we have never grown broccoli rabe, just broccoli and kale.

Seems that kale is from the same family as cabbages and broccoli, but rapini isn't.

Very interesting...

 

[Rolla07]

Maybe a kale/broccoli blend. Rapini is commonly grown/found in NJ..interesting tho!!

 

[Mr_Incredible]

Looks like some sort of mustard plant to me. Bolted, of course.