Created: 05 Jul 2010

Lamb's lettuce ( Valerianella locusta ), also known as 'rapunzel', 'corn salad', or 'm â che', has been cultivated in Europe since the late Middle Ages. It's nutritious and so tasty that it stars in a fairy tale :

One day, the woman stood at the window and looked down into the witch's garden. She saw a bed filled with the most beautiful rapunzel, and it looked so fresh and green that she craved it; she had the most burning desire to eat of it. Her desire increased every day, but since she knew that she could not have any, she grew pale and ill.

This greatly alarmed her husband, who asked her 'what ails you, dear wife?'

'Oh', she replied, 'if I cannot eat some of the rapunzel from that garden, I must surely die.'

- from Rapunzel , collected in the Grimms' Fairy Tales

Few people know that the story of the long-haired girl in the tower starts with a simple pregnancy craving . But what is it about this little plant that would make a new mother not only trade her long-awaited baby for a few mouthfuls of it, but name

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