- Plants
- ›Vascular Plants
- ›flowering plants
- ›Dicots
- ›pinks, cactuses, and allies
- ›knotweed family
- ›Polygonoideae
- ›Docks, Sorrels and Rhubarbs
- ›Rumex
- ›Acetosa
- ›Acetosella

Sheep's sorrel
Rumex acetosella
Rumex acetosella, commonly known as sheep's sorrel, red sorrel, sour weed and field sorrel, is a species of flowering plant in the buckwheat family Polygonaceae. The plant and its subspecies are common perennial weeds. It has green arrowhead-shaped leaves and red-tinted deeply ridged stems, and it sprouts from an aggressive and spreading rhizome. The flowers emerge from a tall, upright stem. Female flowers are maroon in color.
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the old herbals & bestiaries
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Rumex acetosella in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 53195.

