What is red?

While cruising through the Pike Place Market yesterday in Seattle, it struck me that the world seems to view lettuce as having only two colors. Green or red. But like so much of commercial food, what is presented is only a shadow of what should be. Their idea of red is really green but with a red tinge to the tips of the leaves.

In Vermont, along about September, the maple and oaks and elms begin to change the colors of their leaves. It starts at the tips as the chlorophyl dies and the minerals which have been there all along reveal their reds and yellows and oranges. But at that stage, we don't refer to them as being red or yellow or orange. We say they have started to change but are not yet in their full glory.

So why do we accept lettuce that has only the tips of the leaves red as being red lettuce? Shouldn't the whole leaf be red? Like the Merlot lettuce we have on the stand now? Or the Rougette de Montpelier? When you come to the garden in the evening and the light is fading, the Merlot has an unearthly glow to it. It sits next to it's green friends and looks like burgundy wax figures. That is red lettuce. The stuff that has a touch of red on the tips of the leaves is not.