# Violet, lettuce, sow-thistle (Viola odorata) **Viola*; *lattuca*; *sonco** **Known today as.** Sweet violet (*Viola odorata*), garden lettuce (*Lactuca sativa*), sow-thistle (*Sonchus oleraceus*). Kind: Plant Qualities: Cold and moist (Galenic tradition). ## What did Canale use it for? Cooling herbs, added to the bath for hot and dry complexions (ch. 7). ## What does modern science say? Mild herbs. Two bitter compounds of lettuce, lactucin and lactucopicrin, are sedative in mice. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **lactucin and lactucopicrin**: the sedative bitters of lettuce latex - **methyl salicylate glycosides**: in the violet - **mucilage**: - **taraxasterol**: in the sow-thistle **Mechanism.** Three cooling herbs of the bath: lettuce’s lactones are mildly sedative and analgesic in mice, the basis of the Victorian lettuce opium; the violet’s salicylates are anti-inflammatory; the sow-thistle is a bitter. In a bath they are a scent and a mucilage. **Dose.** Safe. **Standing.** Violet has a traditional-use listing in France; lettuce and sow-thistle are foods. ## What lore surrounds it? Folkard has the lettuce as the food of mourning: the ancients “employed it largely in their funeral repasts in commemoration of the death of Adonis, son of Myrrha, whom Venus had concealed in a bed of Lettuces,” and Eubulus “bitterly reproached his wife for having served up at a meal Lettuces, which were only recommended for funeral repasts.” In mediæval days “it was superstitiously thought that an evil spirit lurked in a bed of Lettuces,” whence perhaps the Richmond saying, “O'er-much Lettuce in the garden will stop a young wife's bearing.” Pliny held that lettuces “were thought to cause sleep,” and Pope has “Lettuce and Cowslip wine, probatum est.” The sow-thistle Theseus “is said to have received as a gift from the hands of Hecate,” and in Italian stories “Open Sow-thistle” works like Open Sesame. Of the violet, “according to Rapin, the Violet was once a fair nymph, who was changed by Diana into this flower to avoid the importunities of Apollo”; the Greek Ion was given “because, when Jupiter had metamorphosed Io into a white heifer, he caused sweet Violets to spring from the earth”; the Athenians preferred above all names that of “Athenian crowned with Violets”; and at the floral games of Toulouse the prize for the best poem “consisted of a golden Violet.” Thiselton-Dyer has lettuce-beds as a haunt of spirits: “Evil spirits were once said to lurk in lettuce-beds, and a certain species was regarded with ill favour by mothers,” which may account for the Surrey saying, “O'er much lettuce in the garden will stop a young wife's bearing.” The sow-thistle “in Russia is said to belong to the devil,” yet in Italy mangers are decked at Christmas “with moss, sow-thistle, cypress, and holly.” The smooth sow-thistle and the garden lettuce both keep the flower-clock. Grieve adds that violets were used by the Athenians “to moderate anger,” to procure sleep and “to comfort and strengthen the heart,” that Pliny “states that a garland or chaplet of Violets worn about the head will dispel the fumes of wine and prevent headache and dizziness,” that a Celtic poem recommends them “steeped in goats' milk to increase female beauty,” and that in the days of Charles II a conserve called “Violet Plate” “was considered of excellent use in consumption and was sold by all apothecaries.” ## What did the older authorities say? **Pliny.** Of the violet: “Next after the roses and the lilies, the violet is held in the highest esteem,” in three kinds, the purple, the yellow, and the white; the purple, called ion, springs up of itself in sunny spots with a thin soil; and of the garland flowers the Romans of old knew “hardly any but the violet and the rose.” ## Sources - Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 21.14, 21.10, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library. - Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Lettuce.” Project Gutenberg #44638. - Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Cowslip.” Project Gutenberg #44638. - Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Sow-Thistle.” Project Gutenberg #44638. - Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Violet.” Project Gutenberg #44638. - Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*. Project Gutenberg #10118. - Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Violet, Sweet.” botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/v/vioswe12.html - Wesołowska, A., et al. (2006). “Analgesic and sedative activities of lactucin and some lactucin-like guaianolides in mice.” *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 107. --- *Violet, lettuce, sow-thistle.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/violet-lettuce-sow-thistle Historical description, not medical advice.