Well it is green!
“Leaves” of course, to complete the title of the only book ever to make the subject of punctuation entertaining.
Time was when a diner ordering a salad could rely on the prompt arrival of a dish made up of crisp full flavoured lettuce with maybe a few tomato and cucumber slices plus, if the establishment included “continental” in its advertising, the occasional olive, or (very daring) gherkin. Not any more! Not since the advent of “leaves”. a generic for a multitude of vegetable atrocities justified by their common qualities of bitterness, toughness with stringiness and lack of substance. Gone is the succulent lettuce, replaced by this anaemic collection of assorted storks, with worst of all the raw cabbage. What Englishman does not know that to be edible, cabbage, along with spinach requires prolonged immersion in boiling water? It is though an army of caterpillars had been let loose on the plate, only to be drowned in the ocean of dressing required to add surrogate flavour to this supremely unappetising dish.
Let us leave leaves to the Panda of Lynne Truss’s book title.
Fluter1 