La laitue asperge ou celtuce est une ancienne plante chinoise cultivée qui est aussi appelé Wosun. Les feuilles amères sont cueillies et peuvent être consommées dans les salades, mais elles sont également très bonnes comme aliments pour animaux. La plante forme une pousse charnue, qui est pelée et mangée crue ou cuite à la vapeur et a un goût exquis - elle est utilisé comme les asperges, d'où le nom de laitue asperge. [Magic garden seeds]

Stalk (Asparagus) lettuce (var. angustana Irish ex Bremer, syn. var. asparagina Bailey, syn. L. angustana Hort. in Vilm.) (Stem lettuce, Stengelsalat, Laitue-tige) Plants with swollen stalks, which are eaten raw or cooked like asparagus. Leaves can be eaten raw in a very young stage or cooked like spinach (Lebeda, Křístková 1995). According to Lindqvist (1960) there are two types recognized within this group. The Chinese cultivars have light grey leaves resembling cos lettuce leaves; the second type has long lanceolate leaves with pointed apices. According to Helm (1954), stalk lettuce originated in Tibet, which would account for its extensive cultivation in China, in the Pamirs and India (Rodenburg 1960; DeVries 1997). However, the lettuce illustrated in Egyptian tombs is also stalk lettuce and dates back to about 2500 B.C. If lettuce originated in Mesopotamia, it is even older in the Middle East. Both asparagus types and cos-like types are found in Egypt. We think it is more likely that the original types migrated to the Far East overland, showing up there up to 1,500–2,000 years later. It is possible that Helm (1954) was referring to L. indica, which is common in the Far East and grown in China, Japan, and some Southeast Asian countries (Rubatzky, Yamaguchi 1997). Stalk lettuce material collected in Afghanistan appeared to be an intermediate between cos and stalk lettuces and is sometimes used as a food for livestock (Boukema et al. 1990).