Lotta lolla rossa / fractal dimensions

Just harvested a lettuce from the allotment which, thanks to the fact that it is a lolla rossa, is not slug damaged 😀 which is pretty unusual for allotment grown salad. One of the things it got me thinking is how big is a leaf... stupid question you may think but...

... they are kinda crinkly around the edges:

(this is the edge of that one leaf). When you open them out to wash you find a lot more square inches of leaf than has any business being in such a small space. This was looked into before [1] regarding the coastline of Britain... anyhow, I haven't actually calculated the fractal dimension but I know there is a lot of leaf in there - so much so that one little lettuce can comfortably fill the salad spinner:

and, quite honestly, it would not surprise me if the total surface area is the same as four tennis courts! 😱

Even better, it tastes good!

[1] Mandelbrot, B (1967) Science Vol. 156, Issue 3775, pp. 636-638 DOI: 10.1126/science.156.3775.636