June 7, 2011

Blue Lettuce


A hoverfly found something to eat in this fragile blue flower.



It's a Blue Lettuce (Lactuca perennis). It likes warm and sunny places, so you only find it on well-exposed hillsides and fields. The flowers open only when it is sunny.














The rosettes look like those of the common Dandelion, but the leaves are a bit more incised. Like those, and also like the garden lettuce it has a white latex.















The shadow of another insect.