Valerianella locusta

Valerianella locusta is a small annual plant that is eaten as a leaf vegetable. It has a characteristic nutty flavour, dark green colour, and soft texture, and is popularly served as salad greens.[2] Common names include corn salad,[3] common cornsalad,[4] lamb’s lettuce,[3] mâche[3] (/mɑːʃ/), fetticus,[3] feldsalat,[3] nut lettuce,[3] field salad. In restaurants that feature French cooking, it may be called doucette or raiponce, as an alternative to mâche, by which it is best known.[5] In German-speaking Switzerland it is known as Nüsslisalat or Nüssler, terms that have been borrowed by the area’s many English speakers. In some areas of Germany it is known as rapunzel, and is the origin of the girl’s name in the eponymous fairy tale.

Corn salad grows in a low rosette with spatulate leaves up to 15.2 cm long.[3] It is a hardy plant that grows to zone 5, and in mild climates it is grown as a winter green.

In warm conditions it tends to bolt to seed,[6] producing much-branched stems with clusters (cymes) of flowers. The flowers have a bluish-white corolla of five fused petals, 1.5 to 2 mm (0.06 to 0.08 in) long and wide, and three stamens. Underneath the flowers is a whorl of bracts. Fertilized flowers produce achenes with 2 sterile chambers and one fertile chamber.[7][8][9]