Posted: Mon Mar 28, 05 8:39 pm Post subject: Wild Sorrel
I rescued a wild sorrel plant last year. It'd been dug out by some road maintenance people from an embankment on the A14, and the poor little plant was sitting there slowly wilting.
So it came home with me, and I planted it in a corner of the garden. Gave it a handfull of manure to set it off.
Today I picked the two spare plantlets that it had spawned and put them in the herb patch; I rekon I could probably also split the big plant into at least half a dozen plants if I so chose.
It's got a slightly more intense flavour than the larger leaved sorrel varieties, and a distinct colour and shape. It grows like the weed it is, and it seems unfussed as to where it grows (in the wild it seems to thrive best in really rich hedgerows, but it'll appear in a patch of muck on a railway track if given the chance).
If you get the chance, get some wild sorrel in your garden. I don't know whether anyone sells the seed, but if the do then jump on the chance of getting some.
Interesting, walking the surrogate mutt the other day, we realised that the area we walk through - which is having a road built through it, with scores of mature trees knocked out, to faciliate a small quarry - is positively littered with sorrel - only realised because our own patch of seed grown sorrel is slowly recuperating. Scent confirmed our suspicion, but there are so many dogs going through there, we were reluctant to have a taste
Will keep an eye out though, you never know. Is there anything it could possibly be mistaken for? It looks like sorrel and it smells like sorrel...
It's kind of similar to dock, and dock seedlings often have similar shaped (even slightly similar tasting) leaves. The leaves of young arum look a bit like it too, as I suppose do bistort leaves. Of those it's only arum that'll kill you, but the smell and taste is so radically different that you'll be fine.
judith
Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 22789 Location: Montgomeryshire
Posted: Tue Mar 29, 05 8:57 am Post subject:
Wild sorrel is brilliant stuff. We love it, the pigs love it, the chickens go mad over it. Our garden is full of it.
So why on earth have I got a pot full of french sorrel seedlings on my windowsill ? Must be the Spring sowing frenzy that has addled my brain.
wellington womble
Joined: 08 Nov 2004 Posts: 15051 Location: East Midlands
Posted: Tue Mar 29, 05 9:11 am Post subject:
any chance of a picture? I'm hopeless at plants that don't come with labels. We do so much walking, that I must be walking past (and probably over) loads of wild goodies all the time.
any chance of a picture? I'm hopeless at plants that don't come with labels. We do so much walking, that I must be walking past (and probably over) loads of wild goodies all the time.
I'll be more forthcoming with pictures when I sort out the scanner, and how to get the most out of it on the Mac at home (see IT board...)
? Must be the Spring sowing frenzy that has addled my brain.
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