Garden Pink-sorrel - Oxalis latifolia subsp. latifolia
Favourite Photos
Species Description
Widely grown in gardens and escaping and becoming naturalised; mainly in the south.
Stace 4:
Oxalis latifolia Kunth (O. vespertilionis Zucc.) - Garden Pink-sorrel.
Differs from O. debilis in bulblets often formed at end of rhizomes to 3cm; leaflets with variously rounded to more or less pointed lobes, with obtuse to rounded sinus, without warts; flowers pink, sometimes white, 8-13mm; (2n=14, 24). Neophyte-naturalised; weed of gardens and other open ground, reproducing by bulblets only; frequent in South England and Channel Islands, scattered elsewhere in British Isles North to Berwickshire; Central & South America. Variable in leaf-shape; the commonest plants have 'fishtail-shaped' (obsagittate) leaflets with elongated lobes rounded at ends and rounded to obtuse sinus; some plants from Devon, Cornwall and Guernsey have much more rounded leaflet-lobes with obtuse sinus; plants known as O. vespertilionis (very rare in Britain) have 'V-shaped leaflets' with very elongated lobes often subacute at extreme ends and rounded sinus.
Key:
- Petals red, pink, mauve or white
- Leaves with 3-4 leaflets
- Stem (ignore leafless peduncles) 0 or a rhizome at or below soil level
- Leaves arising from bulb at or below soil level; bulb often producing thin rhizomes
- Leaves with 3 leaflets
- Leaflets widest at or near apex, without submarginal dots