The Wilmington morning star., 1940-10-07
Salad Plants Essential In Sup
plying Important Body
Building Materials
BY GUY A. CALDWELL

Vitamins and mineral salts stored
in green things provide cheap health
insurance during winter months.
Cows cropping grass, and rabbits
nibbling lettuce, have the edge on
many humans. BY nature they pre-
fer what is good for them-the ten
derest shoots and the ~greenest
plants.
q If YOU are training for a marathon
or hoping to tip the scale at an ad-
ditional ten pounds, you won't find
the necessary ~calories in salads.
Keep to your beefsteaks and pota.
toes then. But for the body-build.
ing minerals, such as iron and calci-
UNI, salad plants are an essential.
Thanks to improved methods of
growing, refrigerating, and trans.
porting, some form of this highly
perishable food can put in an ap.
pearance at the dinner table every
day in the year.
Most important of our salad crops
is lettuce with Its four types, the
crisp head, the ~butterhead, cos or
romaine, and leaf. Though its rise
to popularity is recent, lettuce can
trace its origin back hundreds Of
years to a plant carried from Eu.
rope to the Himalayas. 1t derives
it's name from ELactuca' of CLASH
cal times, whose milky fluid served
the Romans as a freckle remover and
sedative. In the Seventeenth CEN
fury Yettis won a reputation for
cooling a "hot and fainting
stomacke." Crisp head lettuce is the
refining favorite in the markets from
coast to coast.
On it's home ground in the East
the butterhead holds its own. Small
Ter, softer than the Iceberg, the
main commercial crop of Western
lettuce growers Ind of growing i'm
p~ortance with Florida and Carolina
growers, the butterhead has straight
edged leaves of a rather coarse tex
ture. 1t gains Its name from its ten
der golden heart leaves. Not so
handsome a IS its western rival, the
butterhead makes up in flavor for
what it. lacks in looks.
OF the several varieties-Big Bos-
ton, White Boston, Unrivaled, May
king-Big Boston is the only one
offering competition to Iceberg in
the carload movement of lettuce and
then only in limited areas.
Cos or romaine is another heading
lettuce. This tall thin member of
the lettuce family comes to market
in the spring and fall. Its elongat-
ed head is composed of marrow
leaves, bleaching from medium green
at the outside to creamy white at the
center. Thick midribs give the leaves
a crunchy, full body, and flavor is
rich.
Leaf lettuce is not grown extern
sively in a commercial way. Mar
ket gardeners, in some sections, like
to grow this plant because Of it's
hardy nature, and greenhouse leaf
lettuce finds a ready sale in Pitts
burgh, Cleveland, and certain East
ern markets. But both the straight
edged, smooth-leaf type of leaf let
tuce and the Grand Rapids variety
with its wavy, tightly curled green
leaves, are losing ground steadily to
the heading lettuces.
Lettuce makes exacting demands
wherever grown and by whatever
method. 1t requires good soil rich
in organic, matter, sufficient water,
plenty of fertilizer, a large amour,
of hard labor, an even temperature,
and protection from its worst enc
my-excessive heat. Even after the
heads have been cut, they call for
special care until they r deliverd
at the customers doorstep.
Luciferin. luciferaSe. and oxygen