youmaicai?

[Pengyou]

what is the English name for youmaicai?

[skylee]

Indian lettuce?

Ref - http://www.fooddb.com.hk/chi_fruit.php?id=14&type=1 and http://www.vmo.org/en/index/page_vegeprice/

[count_zero]

Good question! I've never heard of it outside of China.

"Indian lettuce" does seem to be used for youmaicai but also several other kinds of plants.

According to Baidu, its Latin name is "Lactuca sativa L."

On this page, dozens of types of "Lactuca sativa L." are listed.

http://www.ars-grin.gov/misc/mmpnd/Lactuca.html

From that page:

Lactuca sativa L. (Angustana Group) (Leaf type)

SYNONYM(S) : Lactuca sativa L. (Leaf type)

CHINESE : 油麦菜 You mai cai (yóumàicài).

ENGLISH : Chinese leaf-lettuce.

So "Chinese leaf-lettuce" seems like another good option but bear in mind that you will be using a word that nobody else knows, which is not always conducive to communication.

If you are in China, I would recommend using "youmaicai" for the same reason that should you use "yuxiang rousi" and "mapo doufu".

[WestTexas]

There are a lot of Chinese leafy vegetables that seem to have no good English translation. For example, many people probably learned that 白菜 is cabbage. But actually, at least where I live, cabbage is 大头菜, and 白菜 is a different plant.

蕨菜 is another one I don't know any English for.

[count_zero]

蕨菜 is used to flavour vermicelli served in Guizhou and Hunan restaurants. They're very nice actually and sometimes translated as "fern noodles".

I saw a packet in the supermarket and it was labelled as "brakeroot vermicelli". Though an image search for "brakeroot" doesn't seem too conclusive.

[liuzhou]

I've seen 油麦菜 translated as "leaf lettuce" or "Indian lettuce".

However, as has been pointed out already, those terms are at least as obscure to the average person as 油麦菜.

Though an image search for "brakeroot" doesn't seem too conclusive.

Try a search for "brake fern". Lots of results.

[smurese]

Could this be the vegetable you are looking for in English Wikipedia, according to the Latin species and variety name... under the heading of "Celtuce"? Other names are given as "celtuse (Lactuca sativa var. asparagina, augustana, or angustata), also called stem lettuce, celery lettuce, asparagus lettuce, or Chinese lettuce" - or perhaps it's a similar or related variety. Wikipedia says it's "a cultivar of lettuce grown primarily for its thick stem". No mention of "Indian lettuce" on that page, and a Google Image search for "Indian lettuce" seems to get a few appropriate hits, but not as satisfactory as doing the same search for "celtuce". It looks like a LETTUCE growing as a CELERY... get it...?

As you'll see from the pictures below, CELTUCE looks rather different during different stages of its growth:

A seed company in California

Society for Culinary Arts Forums

A blog for an American organization

Note that all the picture sources above for CELTUCE were written by Americans.

It is often eaten overseas in its canned pickled form (popular in China too, especially with rice porridge).

from Alibaba.com

Well, the People's Daily might settle the matter. There are differences and diffferent names. The two are 油麦菜yóumàicài and 莴笋wōsǔn. According to their article:

许多人都有这个疑问：“油麦菜和莴笋长得差不多，口感也相似，是否就是同一种蔬菜呢？”

Many people have this question: "油麦菜yóumàicài and 莴笋wōsǔn look alike, and the taste is also similar, are they the same kind of vegetable?"

其实，油麦菜和莴笋虽然是亲戚，但却是两种菜...

Although 油麦菜yóumàicài and 莴笋wōsǔn are related, they are in fact two types of vegetables...

...莴笋和油麦菜都属于莴苣属，莴笋属于茎用莴苣，油麦菜属于叶用莴苣的一个变种——长叶莴苣。

...莴笋wōsǔn and 油麦菜yóumàicài both belong to Genus Lactuca, 莴笋wōsǔn belongs to the Lactuca variety used for its stem, 油麦菜yóumàicài belongs to the Lactuca variety used for its leaves - long leaf Lactuca (lettuce - like Romaine lettuce?)

And by the way, Google Translate calls 油麦菜yóumàicài "Indian lettuce" - for whatever that's worth.