Deer Tongue, An Heirloom Story

Heirloom Story Post

The last time I saw the tongue of a deer was when I caught a young doe munching on my lettuce patch in the early morning. Unfortunately, she wasn’t eating Deer Tongue lettuce, as that would have been an amazing advertisement photo op for our heirloom variety. I do suspect, however, that this variety would have been her first choice had it been growing in the garden at the time. The tender, nutty and pleasantly-sharp flavor of Deer Tongue lettuce just seems like the kind of fare the forest would conjure up.

Like all heirloom varieties, the Tongue has a tale. It first made its way to North America via the English settlers, who carried the seeds with them to New England in the mid-1700s. As you guessed, it was named for its deer-tongue-like shape. It was a popular variety for almost 200 years, until the post World War II industrialization of agriculture, when there was a sudden push to mass produce food and ship it long distances. That’s where the story kind of stalled for Deer Tongue lettuce.

Like a two-legged horse, Deer Tongue lettuce doesn’t travel well. It is a relatively fragile variety, built more for a 100-meter dash to the kitchen than a marathon haul to distant supermarkets. It couldn’t compete with hardy and sturdy-leafed lettuce varieties and it was suddenly relegated to a life of obscurity.

Until recently. Yes, Deer Tongue lettuce has been making a comeback. Sure, you still won’t find Deer Tongue lettuce in supermarkets today. But that’s okay. Sometimes we need our food to remind us of simpler times, when fifteen minutes was all you needed to go from garden to plate. And we at Bucktown Seeds are proud to be supporting its valiant return to the backyard garden.

Growing Tip Post

It’s a bitter pill to swallow. On these sporadically hot days of June, it can happen very suddenly. Anybody who’s done their share of lettuce-growing has been there. You walk over to the garden only to see your prized lettuce patch has bolted to the sky and may even be sporting some pretty flowers on top. You take a bite of a leaf and find that the deliciousness of yesterday is gone. Dang.

Lettuce speaks in bitter tones when it’s in heat. It’s the romance language of lettuce, spoken when the reproductive phase is calling, spurred on by the conditions and the calendar. This bitter end comes to all growers of lettuce, eventually. But we can delay the inevitable by taking some simple preventive measures.

First, we need to understand that the shallow roots and thin leaves of most lettuce varieties means more frequent watering, especially in a full-sun area on the days when it starts feeling more like summer than spring outside. Employing drip irrigation or a soaker hose will take some of the burden off of you. Also, light mulching when the lettuce gets larger will help retain more water. If you can find a way to create some shade or filtered sun during the hottest hours of the day, this would be another added benefit. Doing these things regularly may just extend your salad eating a couple weeks.

We should also remember that for many growing zones lettuce is largely a Spring and Autumn affair and summer is when other, fleshier crops can shine. For lettuce, it is good to get started early enough in the spring to assure sufficiently-long growing and harvest periods before the summer heat settles in. Or, if you are someone who doesn’t break out the garden gloves until mid-spring, you could plant a short-season variety, like our Black-seeded Simpson. All that said, if you are the stubborn type that demands lettuce right from the garden in the midsummer heat, you’ll want to try one of our more heat-resistant varieties, like Deer Tongue.

With a little pre-season planning and in-season maintenance, you’ll be sure to have an abundance of lettuce right when you want it.

Health Benefit Post

There are some people going around saying that lettuce is just a filler food, devoid of any real nutrition. Kids, don’t pay attention to these people. The common salad-and-sandwich varieties of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is far from nutritionally impotent. In fact it contains many important vitamins and minerals– too many to list in a character-limited post. Regular lettuce consumption can be a key player in your overall eating-for-health plan. Its nutrient profile is an asset for things like strengthening eye, bone and cardiovascular function. It should be noted that there is variation in nutrient density between different cultivars. For example, you would need to eat 10x as much Iceberg lettuce to match the beta carotene content in Romaine lettuce. Yet, if it’s a hot day, snacking on Iceberg lettuce will keep you more hydrated than most other varieties. To reap the wide range of benefits that lettuce has to offer, our suggestion is to mix different varieties into your garden and your diet. And stop listening to the haters.

“It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ‘soporific’.

I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuce; but then I am not a rabbit.”

Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter

If you know any French, perhaps you noticed that the word for lettuce, “la laitue”, sounds a lot like the word for milk, “lait”. Or if you’ve seen the genus (Latin) name for lettuce, Lactuca, or the Old English word for lettuce, “lactuce”, maybe you recognized the resemblance to those milky English words, like lactation, lactose, etc.

Coincidences? Of course not.

Lettuce was indeed named after the milky latex fluid secreted from the base of its stems, most prominently from Lactuca virosa, the wild species from which we derived our common salad lettuce species of today, Lactuca sativa. This milky substance is called lactucarium, but is also known as "lettuce opium". It was used by the ancient Egyptians as a mild opiate and was even introduced as a drug in the United States in the late 18th century. While not widely used today, some natural healing practitioners may still prescribe it as a mild sedative, pain reliever or psychotropic.

For those of you wondering if this is why you felt so relaxed after eating a salad for lunch yesterday, the answer is probably no. That was probably more due to your satisfaction of having made a good dietary choice for once. In truth, while there is trace lactucarium in many common lettuce varieties, like Iceberg and Romaine, it is generally not enough to cause this kind of sedative effect.

Unless perhaps if you are a bunny.