perennial sorrel

Photo: Didier Descouens — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Survives zone 3 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Sharp, lemony leaves eaten raw in salad when young or cooked into soups and sauces — the acidity is oxalic acid, the same compound that makes rhubarb stalks sharp. Fine in normal culinary amounts; worth moderating if you are prone to kidney stones, and not a green to eat by the bowlful. Cooked sorrel collapses to a khaki purée in seconds, which is normal.

Hardiness

Zone 3–8

Habit

Herb

Edible part

Shoot, Leaf

Ripens

Spring–early summer

Mature size

Leaf rosette 15–30 cm, with flowering stems to 60–100 cm if allowed to bolt; containerable

Light

Full sun to partial

Soil pH

6.0–6.8

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Europe and Asia, on damp meadows, grassland and streamsides, and widely naturalised in North America — one of the commonest wild greens of temperate grassland.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

2 yrs

Growth speed

Fast — cuttable within weeks of germination

Spacing

30 cm (12 in) apart — about 11 per m² (10 per 10 sq ft)

Leaf shape

Arrow-shaped (sagittate) blades 7–15 cm with two backward-pointing basal lobes, bright green and slightly fleshy, in a basal rosette. The lobes are the identification point that separates true sorrel from the docks it grows with.

Root system

A short taproot with spreading fibrous laterals, mostly in the top 30 cm; the crown thickens each year and is easily split. Shallow enough to want watering in drought, since a dry sorrel bolts straight to seed.

Fruit description

Not a fruit crop — a plant grown entirely for the leaf. The reddish flowering spike carries small dry three-winged achenes and should be cut out on sight: bolting turns the leaves tough and doubles their acidity.

Propagation

Seed in spring, or simply divide a clump in autumn — a two-year-old plant splits into half a dozen. Best replaced every three or four years as the crown gets woody.

Pollination

Self-fertile

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.