This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we’re looking at a common weed found throughout the Island. This week we’re looking at Sheep Sorrel (Rumex acetosella). What I grew up calling “Sourgrass”.
Sheep Sorrel is a member of the Buckwheat and Smartweed family, Polgonaceae. The genus Rumex, known as Docks, are diverse and common herbaceous plants here in SC. You often find them growing along roadsides, ditches, and fields. Sheep Sorrel is no exception. It’s a prolific exotic forb across lawns and fallow fields in the spring, coating fields in a wash of red. It prefers drier, sandier soils than most of our other native Docks.
Sheep Sorrel is a basal rosette of leaves that produce several vertical spikes of red-pink wind-dispersed seeds in spring. Its leaves are long, thin, and spear-shaped. The red-pink, heart-shaped seeds act as single wing that carries the seeds on the wind where ever it may blow. Sheep Sorrel gets the colloquial name “Sourgrass,” that I grew up using, from the chemicals found in its leaves and stems. It gets the specific epithet “acetosella” in its scientific name from the flavor of its foliage as well. The plant is chock full of Vitamin C and citric acid. In fact, the leaves of Sheep Sorrel are completely edible! They taste like lemon juice and bland spinach to me. Chewing on the flower stalks reveals a potent sour flavor too, which I was taught to enjoy as a child. Just don’t chew on the flowers or try and eat the fiber-y stems like you would the leaves. That’s not a pleasant experience.
