Purple wood-sorrel
In my back yard on September 8th I found this little purple wood-sorrel flower (Oxalis drummondii). When I say little I mean maybe five-eighths of an inch (15mm) across.
(Yesterday at Muir Woods National Monument in California I saw plenty of redwood sorrel (Oxalis oregana), though none of it was flowering.)
© 2016 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
I picked a wood sorrel very like this today. I picked it to put in a vase. ( I may have been able to eat it, I think). Upon investigating the wood-sorrel/oxalis, I learned that the New Zealand yam is actually oxalis tuberosa.
Gallivanta
October 30, 2016 at 5:52 AM
That seems to mean you can eat the yam per se and also put its leaves/flowers in salads for a bit of tang. The word sorrel is related to the word sour.
Steve Schwartzman
October 30, 2016 at 5:57 AM
I eat the yam either raw or cooked but I haven’t ever thought of trying the leaves or flowers until now.
Gallivanta
October 30, 2016 at 6:05 AM
Just make sure the leaves and flowers of that species are known to be edible. If they are, I’d try a small quantity to see if it upsets your stomach. Bon appétit.
Steve Schwartzman
October 30, 2016 at 11:12 AM
Yes, I will not rush in. I need to do some more investigation.
Gallivanta
October 30, 2016 at 5:59 PM
My gardener tasted the’ wood-sorre’l for me, today. He said it was very nice but if he wasn’t here next week I would know why! Appropriately macabre happenings in my garden for this time of year!
Gallivanta
November 1, 2016 at 5:21 AM
How clever of you to use someone else as a guinea pig. I’ve sometimes thought about the fact that for every plant we know is poisonous, someone paid a price for that knowledge.
Steve Schwartzman
November 1, 2016 at 9:51 AM
I probably should pay him danger money.
Gallivanta
November 1, 2016 at 7:08 PM
I hadn’t heard the expression “danger money” but I found it at
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/danger-money
Steve Schwartzman
November 1, 2016 at 11:13 PM
If you were being paid for your photography I expect you would qualify for danger money.
Gallivanta
November 2, 2016 at 11:03 PM
Ah, but when is a New Zealand yam not a New Zealand yam? The answer seems to be when it’s from South America:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalis_tuberosa
Steve Schwartzman
October 30, 2016 at 6:01 AM
Exactly!
Gallivanta
October 30, 2016 at 6:03 AM
While you’ve focused on sorrel as flora, I recently met sorrel as fauna: a member of the horse family. If the two meanings of sorrel have a common ancestor, etymologically speaking, I couldn’t figure it out, but it’s interesting that the word is used so differently.
shoreacres
October 31, 2016 at 7:06 AM
You’re justified in not being able to figure out a connection. This is another instance of two unrelated words that ended up identical in modern English:
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=sorrel
Steve Schwartzman
October 31, 2016 at 9:32 AM
I too have wondered about the completely different uses for the word sorrel. We have a common sorrel here that pops up everywhere in the garden…the plant, alas, not the horse!…in Peoria we lived on a ravine, and I found exactly one wood sorrel plant growing down there. It is a beautiful plant but quite uncommon in my area.
melissabluefineart
October 31, 2016 at 9:18 AM
Maybe you can write (and illustrate, of course) a children’s book in which sorrel horses keep popping up all over the place.
I just pointed Linda to
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=sorrel
for a confirmation that sorrel the plant and sorrel the horse are unrelated words.
While your wood-sorrel in Peoria was rare, we have two common species of Oxalis in Austin, the one shown here and another with yellow flowers.
Steve Schwartzman
October 31, 2016 at 9:40 AM
What a charming idea! All kinds of fun images are popping into my head now. Like sorrels, I suppose.
The common species we have here has yellow flowers, and has a green-leaved form and a maroon leaved form. Kind of sweet but I much prefer the wood sorrel.
melissabluefineart
October 31, 2016 at 8:41 PM
Then I will lend and you will duly borrel
The charming idea for the equine sorrel.
Steve Schwartzman
October 31, 2016 at 11:50 PM
Who nibbled on the laurel
melissabluefineart
November 1, 2016 at 8:12 AM
And now I’ll stop and write no mórel.
Steve Schwartzman
November 1, 2016 at 9:52 AM
But there could be a moral to the sorrel story.
melissabluefineart
November 2, 2016 at 8:22 AM
I said I’d write no morey
But you added to the story.
Steve Schwartzman
November 2, 2016 at 8:49 AM
Nailed this one. We’ve an Oxalis hanging in our window. The flowers are edible but they are so tiny we eschew rather than chew.
Steve Gingold
October 31, 2016 at 3:01 PM
Well said about eschewing the chewing. Do you know what species of Oxalis you have?
Steve Schwartzman
October 31, 2016 at 11:47 PM
[…] From the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, here’s an opening bud of purple wood-sorrel, Oxalis drummondii, on September 26th. Since then I’ve continued to see these small flowers in various places around Austin, including right at home. Speaking of which, if you’d like to see what an open flower of this species looked like in our yard in 2016, you can check out a post from then. […]
Purple wood-sorrel flower opening | Portraits of Wildflowers
November 13, 2018 at 4:35 AM