| Plant |
Height 50-180 cm |
| Rosette leaves |
Narrowly lanceolate and dentate to lacerate-dentate or sometimes elliptic and pinnatisect, up to 20 × 10 cm in outline. Margins spinose-ciliate, lobes recurved-falcate and linear to lanceolate with lower margins entire but upper margins dentate, terminal lobe always linear. Undivided leaves linear to narrowly lanceolate, up to 200 × 15 mm, attenuate-apiculate. Margins irregularly denticulate-apiculate, bases sagittate-auriculate, auricle lobes up to 2 cm long, apiculate, lamina glabrous or rarely pubescent, midribs finely to strongly prickly-spinulose beneath, thin-textured, glaucous |
| Stem |
Erect, solitary, robust, simple below and branching above, glabrous or sparsely retrorsely-spinulose below, pale |
| Stem leaves |
Decreasing in size above, suberect or ±appressed to stem, sessile |
| Inflorescence |
Paniculate, divaricately branched, narrowly cylindrical to ovoid in outline. Branches up to 20 cm long, bracteate, glabrous. Bracts small, suborbicular, amplexicaul, undersurface papillate |
| Heads |
On slender, bracteate stalks mostly 1-2 cm long. Involucre cylindrical and 6-8 mm long at flowering, conical and enlarging to 13-14 × 4 mm in fruit. Phyllaries papillate-verrucose, in fruit outer lanceolate ±2 mm long and inner narrowly lanceolate, ±12 mm long, margins becoming involute, reflexing completely to shed achenes. Florets 12-17 per head. Corollas pale yellow, ±9 mm long, tubes slender, ±pilose at mouth, ligules spreading, ±5 mm long |
| Achenes |
Pale yellowish-brown with paler beak ± as long as or slightly longer than body. Body oblanceolate, compressed, ±3.5-4.0 × 1.5 mm, broadly ribbed on margins and narrowly 5- or 6-ribbed on each face, hispidulous towards apex. Beak 3.0-4.5 mm long, apically expanded. Pappus several-seriate, of numerous white, barbellate bristles 4-5 mm long, free |
| Reference |
Van Herwijnen Z.O. & Manning J.C. (2017) A review of the history and taxonomy of the enigmatic southern African endemic wild lettuce Lactuca dregeana DC. (Asteraceae: Lactuceae: Lactucinae). South African Journal of Botany 108: 352-358 |
