Corn salad is a small dicot annual plant

Annual plant

An annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers, and dies in a year or season. True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed...

 of the family Valerianaceae

Valerianaceae

The Valerianaceae, or valerian family, of the order Dipsacales contains about 350 species in 7 genera. Plants are generally herbaceous and foliage often has a strong, disagreeable odor. They are found native in most regions of the world except for Australia...

. It is also called Lewiston cornsalad, lamb's lettuce, fetticus, field salad, mâche, feldsalat, nut lettuce and rapunzel.

Description

Corn salad grows in a low rosette

Rosette (botany)

In botany, a rosette is a circular arrangement of leaves, with all the leaves at a single height.Though rosettes usually sit near the soil, their structure is an example of a modified stem.-Function:...

 with spatulate leaves

Leaf shape

In botany, leaf shape is characterised with the following terms :* Acicular : Slender and pointed, needle-like* Acuminate : Tapering to a long point...

 up to 15.2 cm long. It is a hardy

Hardiness (plants)

Hardiness of plants describe their ability to survive adverse growing conditions. It is usually limited to discussions of climatic adversity. Thus a plant's ability to tolerate cold, heat, drought, flooding, or wind are typically considered measurements of hardiness. Hardiness of plants is defined...

 plant that grows to zone 5

Hardiness zone

A hardiness zone is a geographically defined area in which a specific category of plant life is capable of growing, as defined by climatic conditions, including its ability to withstand the minimum temperatures of the zone...

, and in mild climates it is grown as a winter green

Leaf vegetable

Leaf vegetables, also called potherbs, green vegetables, greens, leafy greens or salad greens, are plant leaves eaten as a vegetable, sometimes accompanied by tender petioles and shoots...

. In warm conditions it tends to bolt to seed.

Corn salad grows wild in parts of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, northern Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 and western Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

. In Europe and Asia it is a common weed in cultivated land and waste spaces. In North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 it has escaped cultivation and become naturalized on both the eastern and western seaboards.

History

Corn salad was originally foraged by European peasants until the royal gardener of King Louis XIV, de la Quintinie, introduced it to the world. It has also been used as food in Britain for many centuries and appears in John Gerard's Herbal of 1597 but only became commercially available there in the 1980s. It was grown commercially in London from the late 18th/early 19th century and appeared on markets as a winter vegetable. See 'Vegetables and their Culivation', Sanders, T. W. 1917. The common name corn salad refers to the fact that it often grows as a weed

Weed

A weed in a general sense is a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance, and normally applied to unwanted plants in human-controlled settings, especially farm fields and gardens, but also lawns, parks, woods, and other areas. More specifically, the term is often used to...

in wheat fields.

Nutrition

Like other formerly foraged greens, corn salad has many nutrients, including three times as much vitamin C as lettuce, beta-carotene, B₆, B₉, vitamin E, and omega-3 fatty acids. It is best if gathered before flowers appear.