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Wood Sorrel: Identification, Uses, and Precautions

Wood sorrel (Oxalis), aka sourgrass, or my favorite name, “Nature’s Skittles”, is an amazing edible wild plant!

This is one of the best plants for beginner foragers because they are easy to find, easy to identify, and extremely common!

Yellow Wood Sorrel Flowers And Leaves

In this comprehensive article, I’m going to show you how to identify them, where to find them, ways to use them (some you may not have heard about), and debunk some of the myths surrounding wood sorrel “toxicity”.

What is wood sorrel?

Wood sorrel generally refers to a plant in the genus Oxalis. There are over 500 species in the genus, and they can all be used in similar ways. This article will focus on two main species: Common Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis stricta) and Violet Wood Sorrel (Oxalis violacea).

Other notable species include:

  • Oxalis corniculata: Creeping Woodsorrel
  • Oxalis pes-caprae: Bermuda Buttercup
  • Oxalis acetosella: European Wood-Sorrel
  • Oxalis dillenii: Slender Yellow Woodsorrel
  • Oxalis debilis: Largeflower Pink-Sorrel
 
Don’t confuse wood sorrel with the “true” sorrel in the genus Rumex these are two plants that despite their similar names aren’t actually closely related. More on that in the next section.
 
Wood sorrel is one of many wild food species that is featured in my biggest wild food foraging guide. Check it out here!

Etymology and names

There are many common names for wood sorrel, like sourgrass, or my favorite, nature’s skittles!

Oxalis comes from Greek oxus which means “sharp, pointed,” in reference to the sharp sour flavor.

True “sorrel” are actually Rumex – Dock/Sorrel species. The common denominator is that they are both sour-tasting greens. The term sorrel comes from French sur and PIE “sura,” meaning “sour” (Etymology Online).

History

An interesting mention in King’s American Dispensatory is that one can drink a mixture of chalk (calcium carbonate) with water if one eats too much wood sorrel. This is likely because calcium was believed to counteract the oxalic acid!

There are many mentions of Native American tribes consuming the plants both raw and cooked. One reference kept popping up that they bulbs were fed to horses to make them faster. I have no idea if that works, but horse owners, might be something to try (Source: Native American Ethnobotany).

Identification

Wood sorrel are easy plants to recognize. If you know what details to look for! Below you can see a graphic highlighting some of the important ones. We go into more detail below.

You can find a high-res version of the below graphic for free on my Patreon page!

Wood Sorrel Quick Identification Guide

Leaves

To me, their two most iconic features are trifoliate compound leaves with notched, “heart-shaped” leaflets. You may think that the leaves somewhat resemble what you know of as “shamrock,” which we’ll discuss further later!

Single Wood Sorrel Trifoliate Compound Leaf
One trifoliate compound leaf of wood sorrel

Below you can clearly see a single heart-shaped leaflet of wood sorrel. Remember, this is not a leaf itself, but part of a leaf!

Wood Sorrel Heart Shaped Leaflet
Heart-shaped leaflet of wood sorrel

Flowers

The flowers of wood sorrel range from yellow, to pale purple, to a vibrant pink! What they all have in common is five petals, five sepals, and ten stamen!

You can see a detailed view below.

Yellow Wood Sorrel Oxalis Stricta Macro Flower
Close up of a wood sorrel flower

Fruit

Wood sorrel has long “capsule-like” fruits. Depending on whether the species is annual or perennial they may produce hundreds of seeds or only a couple dozen. (The annual ones produce more)

Wood Sorrel Seed Capsule
Close up of the capsule-like fruits of wood sorrel

Wood sorrel identification overview:

  • Flowers: five-petaled, with varying colors, typically yellow to pinkish in hue; five sepals, ten stamens, and a fused carpel
  • Leaves: compound trifoliate leaves are alternate, individual leaflets are usually distinctly heart-shaped. Some species have greater than three leaflets, but the vast majority is trifoliate
  • Fruit: long, capsule-like fruit
 

These generally work for the vast majority of wood sorrel, but there are some notable exceptions to the leaflet count. For instance, Oxalis tetraphylla has four leaflets per leaf and Oxalis decaphylla has a whole ten leaflets per leaf!

Lookalikes

While wood sorrel are easy to recognize, there are a couple of important similar-looking plants to be aware of. With just a few details, you’ll be able to tell them apart easily!

White Clover - Trifolium repens

Wood sorrel is not the same as clover, this is a common confusion. Wood sorrel and clover are not closely related at all, but they are commonly confused because they both have trifoliate compound leaves.

Many articles about clover will wrongly use photos of wood sorrel, further contributing to the confusion!

Here are two details to easily distinguish them:

  • White clover has leaflets that are not deeply notched (not heart-shaped)
  • White clover has compound flowers vs the simple 5-petaled wood sorrel flowers.
Wood Sorrel Vs Clover

Black medic - Medicago lupulina

Similar to the comparison for clover:

  • Black medic also lacks deeply notched leaflets
  • Black medica has compound, not simple flowers
Wood Sorrel Vs Black Medic

Buttercup - Ranunculus

This may not be as close of a lookalike, but I’m including it because they are toxic with similar yellow flowers that often grow right next to wood sorrel plants.

Make sure to follow the flowers down to the leaves which are very different in form, being pinnately compound rather than palmate with wood sorrel. Further, the petals of buttercup are distinctly shiny, something that wood sorrel flowers lack.

Summary:

  • Buttercup has pinnately compound leaves vs palmate compound with wood sorrel
  • Buttercup has distinctly shiny petals; they glisten in the sun, wood sorrel does not
Wood Sorrel Vs Buttercup

When to find wood sorrel

Many species, particularly annual ones like Oxalis stricta, can be found nearly year-round.

However, others, like Violet wood sorrel and similar species, are perennials and go dormant when the weather gets hotter.

 You can use my Interactive Forager’s Calendar in order to get a better idea of the timing if you’d like to find it!

The Foragers Interactive Calendar

Where to find

Where wood sorrel plants are found depends on the species. Wood sorrel can grow in various locations:

  • Disturbed habitat
  • Woodland settings
  • Suburban lawns

 

Species like Upright Yellow Woodsorrel are often found growing right in your lawn and other open areas!

Species like Violet Wood Sorrel are instead located in more mature woodlands and forests.

Violet Wood Sorrel Cluster Of Pink Flowers
Violet wood sorrel found deep in the woods!

Edibility

All parts of wood sorrel are edible: the leaves, stems, flowers, seed pods, and even tubers! (Though not all species produce a large tuber) In addition, all species of wood sorrel are edible!

This is one of the many benefits of wood sorrel. Wood sorrel has an incredible sour taste. My favorite species for flavor is Violet Woodsorrel, which is exceptionally tangy! 

Violet Wood Sorrel Leaves
Violet wood sorrel leaves have the best flavor in my opinion

However, it’s best to harvest perennial species like Violet Woodsorrel with care and only take what a population could easily replace.

Wood sorrel can be eaten raw or cooked. Here are some of my favorite ways!

  • Garnish for salad
  • Trailside snack
  • Main dish topping
  • Sour drink hot infusion
Raw Wood Sorrel Salad Garnish
Using the leaves and flowers as a salad garnish

Wood sorrel tea

This is my favorite way to consume wood sorrel! I’ve tested several different preparations.

First I tried a cold infusion with the blended leaves. This worked okay, it was kind of like a sour-cucumber drink.

Cold Infusion Fresh Wood Sorrel
A blended and filtered cold infusion

Next, I tried to dehydrate the leaves and make tea with them. This was decent as well, but not my favorite.

Dehydrated Wood Sorrel Leaves
Dehydrated wood sorrel tea doesn't have as much flavor, but is still sour!

By far, my favorite with the best flavor was a hot wood sorrel tea made directly from fresh leaves.

Here is how I make it.

First, gather your fresh leaves and place them into a container.

Making Fresh Wood Sorrel Tea
Adding fresh leaves to make tea

Next, pour over boiling water and let it steep for 5-15 minutes.

Steeping Fresh Wood Sorrel Tea
Pour boiling water over the fresh leaves

After that, strain out the solids. Now, you’re ready to enjoy!

You can add some sweetness if you’d like to complement the delicious sour flavor.

It can be drank hot or with ice to make it an iced-tea!

Dehydrated Wood Sorrel Hot Tea
Strain out the solid for your wood sorrel tea

Here is a summary of the recipe:

  1. Gather wood sorrel leaves.
  2. Place leaves into a container.
  3. Pour over boiling water (1:3 ratio).
  4. Let it steep for 5-15 minutes.
  5. Strain, sweeten to taste, and enjoy!
  6. Optional: add ice to make a cold refreshing beverage.
Fresh Wood Sorrel Iced Tea
Iced wood sorrel tea is my favorite!

Medicinal uses

To me, there aren’t any major medicinal uses of wood sorrel that stand out.

That being said, they contain some amount of ascorbic acid, so can be used to prevent scurvy, if you ever find yourself in such a situation!

There are also mentions of the plant being used to quell thirst and even some external uses for sores (Source: Native American Ethnobotany).

Holding Wood Sorrel Leaves

Chemistry

Wood sorrel contain oxalic acid, the chemical was actually named after these plants (Oxalis) as it was first isolated from wood sorrel.

Finally, in 2024, we got a paper that directly reports the oxalic acid content in a species of Oxalis, O. pes-caprae, which contains approximately 102mg/g (dw) (Source: MDPI).

They also gave good values for moisture content, so we can estimate the fresh weight content would be around 22.42mg/g.

This allows us to directly compare wood sorrel content to that found in a thorough investigation of spinach (Source: HortScience). The study found oxalic acid content to be roughly 84.5mg/g (dw) and using (Source: ResearchGate), we get a moisture loss of 86.7% to give us a fresh weight content of 11.24mg/g.

These values will be used in the Safety section.

Source of the sour taste

Wood sorrel is known for its sour taste, which is often attributed directly to oxalic acid; however, I believe that the presence of other acids, such as citric acid, (or ascorbic acid) could contribute to the flavor as well (Source: PubMed)!

Drinking Wood Sorrel Tea

Safety

You may have heard that wood sorrel should only be consumed in moderation? Let’s explore why that is and if it is valid or not.

From what we’ve established in the Chemistry section, we can get a good idea of the amount of wood sorrel that is safe to eat.

While dozens of articles will tell you to only eat wood sorrel in moderation, they won’t tell you what that amount is! So we’re going to do things differently!

If we use spinach as a reference, then likely we could consume around 30 grams of wood sorrel in a day multiple times in a week. Why? Because multiple recipes for “green-smoothies” that people consume often contain roughly 60 grams of spinach. It would take 30 grams of wood sorrel to get the same amount of oxalates as spinach contains half the oxalate content per fresh weight.

You will never be able to forage that much wood sorrel unless you go very far out of your way!

I tested this myself and 30 grams of wood sorrel is about triple what I would normally forage even if I was consuming what to me is a large amount.

I would go so far as to say that there is little need to even warn people about moderation with consuming wood sorrel as there are too many barriers before that would even be a concern.

You don’t see articles for those green smoothies going out of their way to warn people about oxalates, which likely would be responsible for FAR more oxalic consumption than wood sorrel ever could.

Beyond that, the dangers of oxalate consumption for the vast majority of the population are likely overblown. Other factors like sugary drink consumption, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle are more likely to be contributors to kidney stone formation.

TL;DR – Wood sorrel is safe to consume for the vast majority of people!

Wood Sorrel On Scale For Fresh Weight
30 grams of wood sorrel is exceeding difficult to gather!

Is Shamrock wood sorrel?

There is a lot of confusion about this. An important thing to note before we get started is nobody actually knows what Shamrock truly is. We have some guesses based on historical texts in Ireland, but not a definitive answer.

That being said, based on the way that shamrock is often represented, I would say that wood sorrel is the best candidate for it! You can see in the below photo with the notched leaves, the classic form of wood sorrel.

Wood Sorrel Vs Shamrock

Closing thoughts

I think wood sorrel is a fantastic wild food and herb that more people should know about!

If you haven’t eaten it before, you are missing out!

Wood sorrel is FAR safer than many articles would lead you to believe, which is mainly due to misattributed fears of wild food.

I hope you learned something new in my article. I’ll see you in the next one!

Foraging For Wood Sorrel

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