Sorrel

Rumex acetosa

Polygonaceae

The lemon of the temperate garden — arrow leaves that sharpen soup and fish, with a French pedigree.

Culinary leaf. High in oxalic acid — a food green, not a daily kilo. Sheep’s sorrel is a smaller cousin.

Parts used: Leaf
Traditional notes: Kitchen sour green · With fish and egg · Traditional cooling spring food
Grow · USDA 6b: Perennial, USDA 3–8 Seed or a division. A clump for years. In work: Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Sep · Oct
Harvest: Outer leaves, cut-and-come, spring to frost. Cut back when it bolts.

French and garden types are milder than wild sheep’s sorrel.
A second flush after a midsummer chop.

Safety

Kidney-stone oxalate caution in huge daily amounts

Lore

The French made it a sauce; the English put it in a pie with sugar and called it a tart. The Latin acetosa is ‘the vinegary one.’ Medieval herbals used it as a scurvy green, which is not wrong — it is a spring vitamin with a sour joke attached. Copper pans turn it an unfortunate gray; the old kitchens knew.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.