26 Types Of Lettuce From A to Z (With Photos!) (2024)

From arugula to sorrel, we’re covering the most popular types of lettuce from A to Z in this helpful guide to lettuce varieties!

Lettuce is one of the most widely consumed leafy vegetables in the world, and for good reason. Not only is it low in calories and high in fiber, but it’s also packed with essential vitamins and minerals. From the classic iceberg lettuce to the more exotic mizuna and radicchio, there’s a lettuce variety out there for everyone.

Whether you’re a salad enthusiast, a health-conscious eater, or just looking to switch up your usual greens, this post will introduce you to some of the most popular and lesser-known types of lettuce. So, let’s dive in and explore the world of lettuce!

Types Of Lettuce

There are four main types of lettuce:

• Crisphead, like Iceberg lettuce. These varieties have a tight round shape and are crisp and crunchy.
• Butter Lettuce varieties are round like crisphead, but not as tightly packedand the leaves tend to be smoother than with crisphead varieties. This is a soft, leafy, delicious type of lettuce.
• Loose Leaf varieties are loosely held together which allows you to cut off individual leaves vs harvesting the whole head as you would a crisphead variety.
• Romaine Lettuce varieties are known for their long leaves. Romaine has more of a bitter flavor, while iceberg lettuce has a mild sweetness to it.

Within each of these categories are many different varieties of lettuce. Scroll on to explore some of the most popular types of lettuce!

Arugula

Arugula is also commonly called Rocket, Rucola, and Rugula. Arugula originated in the Mediterranean likely before the Ancient Roman era. It was used back then for medicinal purposes and as an aphrodisiac. Today it is a commonly used leafy green mixed into salads or cooked into a variety of cuisines. Arugula is slightly tart with a peppery taste. For a whole lot more on arugula to include nutrition info, how to prepare, store, and cook with arugula check out Arugula 101.Try it in these Arugula Grain Bowls or on Rocket Pizza.

Baby Beet Greens

Baby beet greens are the young, tender leaves of beet plants. These greens are usually harvested when they are small, about 2 to 3 inches long, and generally found in various shades of green and red, often with a purplish tint. They have a mild, sweet, and earthy flavor. The younger leaves are usually more tender and less bitter than mature beet greens, making them the better salad option. The purple-red veins running through the greens also give your salad an aesthetic look.

Beet greens are, obviously, a great salad add, but you can also add them to your smoothies for a nutritional boost not too far off of what spinach will provide. The sweet greens are also great in sandwiches and wraps.

Batavia Lettuce

Batavia lettuce, also known as French crisp or summer crisp, is a type of lettuce that combines the characteristics of iceberg and loose-leaf lettuce. It has broad, curly leaves and can be found in green and red varieties.

Since it is a looseleaf lettuce, you can simply cut what you need for your recipe, wraps, or salad, and leave the rest in your fridge or growing in your garden. Batavia has a mild, slightly sweet flavor with a crisp, crunchy texture. It’s less watery than iceberg lettuce, offering a more substantial bite like looseleaf. Try it in these Vegan Lettuce Wraps.

Boston Lettuce

Boston lettuce, also known as butterhead, is a popular variety of butter lettuce (Bibb). The typically big loose heads feature large, soft, and rounded leaves with a mild taste that is slightly sweet and buttery. This is a great option for tacos, wraps, or in any salad. Try Boston lettuce in this Summer Strawberry Salad recipe.

Butter Lettuce (Butterhead)

Butter lettuce, often called butterhead lettuce or Bibb, got its name due to its buttery flavor. The name Bibb came from John Bibb who developed this type of lettuce in Kentucky in the 1860s. It can look something like cabbage since it is generally red or green. If you ranked all lettuce varieties on a scale with crunchy and watery on one end, and leafy and soft on the other, iceberg and butter lettuce would be on the two ends. While Iceberg lettuce is crunchy and watery, butterhead is soft, leafy, and delicious in so many ways! As mentioned above, butter lettuce tastes how you’d expect — buttery and sweet. It is a great choice for salads, wraps, tacos, and sandwiches.

Coral lettuce

Coral is a crisp looseleaf variety that can be green, red or speckled, and is known for its mild slightly nutty flavor with a hint of bitterness. The name comes from its frilly, ruffled leaves that sort of resemble coral. Coral’s tight curls tend to hold dressing making it a good salad choice if you like your salad with lots of dressing. Its unique look also makes it a good choice as a garnish, and its crisp crunchy texture suggests its use in burgers, sandwiches, and wraps.

Cress

Cress is one of the oldest leafy greens eaten by humans and comes from the family of mustard and cabbage which gives its small delicate leaves a distinct spicy, peppery, and pungent flavor. While you should always wash any vegetable before eating, be particularly diligent with cress as it grows in water or sandy soil and will often come to you from the grocery still sandy. These greens are a good salad add, but can also form the salad base as in this Watercress Citrus Salad. There are four main varieties of cress.

• Watercress: Is grown, as its name suggests, in water, and has the most pungent flavor of the varieties.
• Garden Cress: This variety is grown in soil and has a spicy flavor some liken to horseradish.
• Upland Cress: Is noted for its thinner stem and more delicate flavor. This variety often comes in plastic bags, with the cress still attached to the roots.
• Korean Watercress: This is a distinctly more crunchy and bitter cress variety.

Chrysanthemum Greens

These greens come from the chrysanthemum flowers we grow in our gardens, and are often just called mums. They originated in China, and references to them appear in Chinese writing as early as 1,500 BCE. Mums were used as an herbal remedy by the ancient Chinese. They reached Europe sometime in the 17th Century. While today we still value them globally for their beauty, they also have their place in our salad bowls. The petals and sprouts are a great add to any salad and give it an extra nutritional boost. You are best to cut them young as the larger they grow the more bitter they become.

Dandelion Greens

These greens are arguably the ultimate free salad green. Our yard in the Highland area of Denver is tiny, but these “free greens” find their way into that little patch. The parts you want are the green and red leaves that grow along the stem. The leaves are best young as, like most greens, they become more bitter with age.

Once they get larger, you will want to cook them to mellow the taste. The bitterness is often compared to that of chicory or arugula. Short of cooking, it can be balanced with other ingredients in your salad or smoothie to compensate for its bitter taste. Similarly, the younger greens are more tender than the old codgers. If you want to cook these greens, try sauteeing them with olive oil, mixing them in with your stir-fry, or even mixing them into your vegetable soup.

At all ages, dandelion greens are a nutritional powerhouse containing a variety of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. And, you probably thought they were just irritating yellow weeds.

Endive

Endive is also known as Belgian endive, Belgian chicory, or French endive. Endive is actually a type of chicory, and is distinctive for its oval shape and smooth texture. It usually has a touch of bitterness and is a good salad addition, but the best use is as an appetizer. Peel off the scoop shaped leaves and use them instead of chips or hard veggies with your favorite dip or salsa. The leaves only have about 1 calorie each which is a fraction of the caloric content in a pita chip. It is also great cooked as in this Endive Gratin recipe. For everything you could ever want to know about endive check out Endive 101. Finally, take a look at the nutritional info on endive at the start of this post. It is as nutritious as other greens, but in different ways (very high in fiber for example). Add it to your salad to get an extra nutrition boost.

Escarole

Escarole is also known as Batavian endive or broad-leaved endive and is a variety of chicory. It is noted for its large, bitter, slightly curly, and crisp leaves, and is often used in Italian cuisine. It has dark green outer leaves and paler inner leaves. The plant’s inner leaves also tend to be less bitter and more tender making them an ideal salad component.

The outer leaves are often described as pleasantly bitter, with a slightly nutty undertone. The bitterness is not as intense as that of other chicories, but the outer leaves are best cooked.Cooking escarole can mellow it, bringing out a subtly sweet flavor. Give it a try in endive gratin. Escarole can be sautéed with garlic and olive oil for a simple side dish, or consider it in soup. It is a traditional ingredient in Italian wedding soup, where it is combined with meatballs and pasta.

Frisée

Frisee is also known as curly endive, chicory endive, or curly chicory. It is a type of chicory characterized by its distinctive curly, frizzy leaves that form a loosely packed head. The leaves range from pale yellow to green, with the inner leaves being more tender and the outer ones more fibrous and bitter. Frisee is quite bitter, so it is best used in recipes that mask this bitterness. Perhaps one of these lettuce recipes will peak your interest!

My favorite way to use it is simply as a salad green mixing it with romaine and spinach to offset frisee’s bitterness and adding complementary arugula. You can always top it with a sweet dressing, should your salad mix be too bitter. If you like spinach or arugula on your pizza, give frisee a chance on homemade pizza night.

Iceberg Lettuce

Iceberg lettuce is the variety many of us grew up with. It is crisp and watery. It almost seems like you drink a glass of water when eating an iceberg salad. Iceberg lettuce is great in tacos as the crunch adds so much to a good taco. Use it in your salads, and its slightly sweet flavor will compliment the other ingredients just perfectly. The classic Iceberg recipe is, of course, a Vegetarian Wedge Salad. Give this slight twist on an old favorite a try. A final word on iceberg lettuce nutrition. Many people say that iceberg lettuce is just water and fiber with little nutritional value. This is just not the case. Take a look at the nutritional chart at the top of this article, and you can see that while it isn’t the nutritional dynamo that Spinach or Arugula are, it is a solid healthy base for your salads.

Little Caesar Lettuce

This is a type of romaine lettuce developed in Mexico in the 1920s specifically to be used in caesar salads. It has small elongated leaves that are green on the outside and yellow on the inside, but with a crisp texture.

It is sometimes called “baby romaine” due to its smaller size than regular romaine. It has a mild, slightly sweet flavor with just a hint of bitterness. If you can’t find it at your grocery, you can easily home grow your own and use it in your favorite Caesar Salad.

Little Gem Lettuce

This lettuce is also known as baby gem or sucrine, and resembles baby romaine lettuce. It has thick, crisp leaves that form a tight rosette. The leaves are dark green on the outside and lighter towards the center. They are typically sweet and crisp, and are a great add to your salads, wraps, or burgers. Consider using them in this Grilled Romaine Salad, but as an hors d’oeuvre given their small size.

Looseleaf Lettuce

We said upfront that looseleaf lettuce is a broad category of lettuce whose varieties are loosely held together which allows you to cut off individual leaves vs harvesting the whole head as you would say iceberg lettuce. This is a great type for your home garden as it is said to be one of the simplest lettuces to grow, and is in fact the most commonly home grown lettuce. These varieties all share a sweet mild taste even when the leaves are large, making them great added to salad, soup, or as a burger topping. Consider using these leaves in Fresh Lettuce Veggie Wraps though this recipe works great with romaine or butter lettuce as well.

Mâche

Mache is also known as field salad, nut salad, lamb’s lettuce, corn salad, and our favorite Rapunzel. The leaves are small, spoon-shaped, and dark-green. It is a salad green with a sweet buttery flavor making it a good add to any salad. It is a bit expensive and, as we said, has small leaves, so it isn’t the variety you want to use as a salad base. It is a great option for balancing out more bitter salad greens and using in wraps.

Mesclun

Okay, we are kind of cheating here. Mesclun is not a type of lettuce, but a name for a mix of baby greens sometimes referred to as a spring mix.

In your grocery mesclun may include an assortment of varieties and typically includes some combination of spinach, arugula, endive, frisee, radicchio, mizuna, and other leafy lettuces. Buying mesclun is an easy way to get a variety of lettuce types in one purchase thus leveraging their different tastes and nutritional benefits.

Mizuna

Mizuna is also known as Japanese greens, spider mustard, and California peppergrass. It is a variety of Asian mustard greens known for a mild peppery taste that can be almost spicy. Mizuna is, however, less intense than most mustard greens. The leaves are typically dark green with long slender stems, unless trimmed short.

You will normally find these greens in a prepackaged salad mixed. It is most commonly used in Japanese cuisine and is also great in stir-fries as the leaves wilt quickly. You can also toss it into your pasta fresh to leverage its peppery flavor.

Oak Leaf Lettuce (Oakleaf)

This is a butter lettuce variety that is typically green or red. It is popular as it is easy to grow at home, and can be grown in a pot on an apartment balcony. As a loose growing variety, you don’t have to cut the whole head, but can just snip as many leaves as you want when you need them. The leaves are tender and fairly sweet. As with other butter lettuce varieties, this is a great raw component for any salad or sandwich topping.

Purslane

Purslane is a salad green known for its tangy and lemony taste with a hint of pepper. It is almost juicy, and often referred to as succulent. It has thick leaves with reddish stems, and grows wild so it is often the target of foragers. It is also often considered an annoying weed. If you don’t want to search for it, you can pick it up at your local farmers market and use it to spruce up your salad mix. Give it a try in place of the spring mix in this Curried Melon Salad.

Radicchio

Radicchio is also known as Red Chicory, Red Leaf Chicory, and Red Italian Chicory. The name is pronounced “ruh-dee-key-o”, or just call it red chicory. It is a dark purple or red colored veggie that’s referred to as a lettuce, though it’s actually a chicory or endive.

The flavor is much different than most lettuces and tends to be bitter. You’ll find it in many Italian and Mediterranean dishes. You can eat it raw in a salad, or use it in cooked recipes like pasta or soup. At the grocery look for heads with bright and “firm” feeling leaves. Avoid wilted or soft heads for the best cooking results and flavor!

Radicchio makes a great addition to salads. You can use it as a leafy base or mix it more sparingly with others. It is also good grilled or sautéd which is great for eating the leaves as their own dish topped with parmesan cheese as we do in this Radicchio Pasta Recipe.

Romaine Lettuce

Romaine lettuce is the ubiquitous lettuce we all depend on for a great salad base, wraps, sandwiches, etc. It is a juicy and crisp lettuce with perhaps just a hint of bitterness (well, perhaps bitter when compared to butter lettuce). The large leaves are stiff enough to use in Lettuce Wraps, and there is just enough bitterness to warrant their long time use in Caesar Salads. Our favorite, however, has to be on the grill as in this Grilled Romaine Salad.

Sorrel

Sorrel is also called spinach dock or narrow-leaved dock. Sorrel originated in Eurasia and has been cultivated around the world for centuries. Unlike most of our lettuce varieties, it grows as a perennial. Its bright green, arrow-shaped leaves are quite sour due to the oxalic acid they contain.

They are definitely best when young as they become tougher as they age. Worldwide the most common use for sorrel appears to be in soups and stews. It can, however, be used in salads if you want to add a bit of tartness to your mix.

Speckled Lettuce

Speckled lettuce is sometimes called trout lettuce, and appears to have originated in Austria or Germany where it was called Forellenschluss. This simply means “trout’s back” as the green lettuce is beautifully speckled with burgundy spots much like a trout. This is a delicious romaine variant that grows to medium size and is known for its buttery leaves though it is not a butter lettuce variety. We recommend cutting the leaves into smaller pieces and mixing them in salads to showcase their aesthetic appearance.

Stem Lettuce

Stem lettuce is also known as celery lettuce, asparagus lettuce, Chinese lettuce, stalk lettuce, and celtuce. It is called stem lettuce because it is grown for its stalk vs leaves. The leaves are perfectly edible, but the stems are often used in stir-fries and also used pretty much as you would cook asparagus. You can substitute these stems into any of these 5 Ways to Cook Asparagus.

America’s Favorite Lettuce

So which of these varieties of lettuce is the most popular? Romaine takes the crown in the USA with 2022 annual sales of $1.54B followed closely by iceberg ($1.33B) and looseleaf ($1.25B). Most of this is grown in California and Arizona. The irrigated desert fields of Arizona are the prime supplier in the winter, and California takes the lead the rest of the year. Florida is the third leading supplier growing lettuce year round.

This wraps up our look at the most popular varieties of lettuce. We hope you found this article helpful, and as always happy cooking!