Oak leaf lettuce

Oak leaf lettuce is a loose-leaf lettuce named for its leaf shape — each blade is deeply and roundly lobed, scalloped along its length like the leaf of an oak tree, so the plant grows as a soft, open, almost flower-like rosette rather than a tight head. It comes in two main forms: a clear bright green and a red-bronze type whose lobed tips flush from green at the heart to a warm bronze-red at the most light-struck margins. The leaves are thin, tender and pliable with no brittle crunch, and the taste is mild, soft, faintly buttery and gently sweet, with only a whisper of clean lettuce bitterness — a salad-bowl leaf valued for delicate texture and shape as much as for flavour.