Miner’s Lettuce. The best salad green is wild and free.

Miner’s Lettuce, aka Claytonia Perfoliata, is a tasty wild salad green that grows from British Columbia to Guatemala and as far east as the Dakotas. It is prevalent throughout the foothills of California, below 6000 ft, during the winter and spring. This wild edible is high in vitamin C and it is said to have prevented scurvy in the miners, hence its moniker. It also goes by the names of Winter Purslane and Indian Lettuce. All portions of this plant are edible raw and cooked: stem, leaves, and flowers. Miner’s lettuce has a cousin, claytonia sibirica, that grows in Russia, Eastern Europe, Canada, Alaska, and the Western US. It is also edible.

Miner’s lettuce was the first culinary gem I discovered in California. My husband and I moved to the foothills in March of 2009 to help out on his family’s farm. We had recently graduated college and spent most of that year on the road, traveling the US, Honduras, and Guatemala. In other words, we were totally broke by the time we arrived in California. We moved into a “studio” strawbale barn with no indoor plumbing (we would spend the next 4 years there🤣) and started settling into our new life together.

It was the last year before the start of a 7 year drought and it rained non-stop for the entire month of March. When the rain finally subsided, a lush carpet of this Miner’s Lettuce popped up in the fertile nitrogen-rich soils where an old chicken coup had once been behind our barn. The leaves were the size of oranges. That spring, as we searched for jobs amid the Great Recession, we feasted on Miner’s Lettuce, morels, and the “feral” lamb from the family’s property that we butchered on a block and tackle outside our barn. I was thankful for this unexpected bounty that year. Every year when the Miner’s Lettuce comes out, I am reminded of our first spring in California and how much of it we ate!

How to Identify Miner’s Lettuce

Habitat

Miner’s Lettuce is most commonly found in cool moist shady areas. In cold hardiness zones of 7-9, that’s January through May. In colder climates, miner’s lettuce can be found throughout the summer and fall in shaded areas.

Miner’s lettuce grows in wetland and non-wetland environments in a range of soil types from sand and loam to rocky cracks on cliff-sides. The leaf size and flavor varies greatly depending on the soil nutrients. In soils lacking nutrients or a lot of water, the leaves can be as small as dimes and the stem only 2 inches long. In fertile rich topsoils, the leaves will be the size of teacup saucers and the tender stem 12 inches tall or taller.

Features

• When young, the stems terminate in an elongated oval/spearlike leaf.
• As the leaves mature they grow into triangular-round disk-like leaves at the end of the stem.
• As the plant continues to mature, the leaves become perfoliate, the stem passes through the middle of the leaf and terminates in a cluster of small white-pinkish flowers.
• Seeds are tiny, black, and shiny.
• The stem is tender.

How to Grow Miner’s Lettuce

You can buy seeds for Claytonia and plant them in successive plantings in the fall and late summer for continual harvest. I prefer, however, just to encourage it to grow naturally by allowing some of it to go to seed. It is a prolific self-seeder. As the plants go to seed, I pull them out and shake the seeds of the plant in the area that I want them to grow next year. My lawn is becoming more edible every year.

This patch of Miner’s Lettuce, Chickweed, and “Yard Chard” (escaped from it’s garden bed) is Aila’s favorite spot. It’s amazing how she instinctually gravitates to this patch of vegetation for her outdoor snacking. Then again, she regularly scavenges for “floor scores” inside too….

Culinary Uses

Miner’s Lettuce tastes like a mix between spinach and butter lettuce. It can be used raw, which is my go to method for it. It can also be cooked like swiss chard or spinach, by blanching or sauteeing. A simple salad of Miner’s Lettuce, lemon olive oil OR walnut oil, and shaved parmesan is one of my favorite preparations for this beautiful green. You can mix it into other salad greens mixes. It makes a perfect garnish to dress up any dish.