96 POLYGONACEAE (BUCKWHEAT FAMILY) 
Rootstocks extensively creeping, branched, yellowish, tough 
and fibrous, with tufts of feeding rootlets at intervals of a few 
inches. Stems three inches to a 
foot or a little more in height, 
slender, erect or nearly so, usually 
simple. Leaves halberd-shaped, 
long-petioled, the basal auricles 
spreading; stem leaves often with- 
out auricles; they are smooth, light 
green, papillose, filled with an acid 
juice — which is rather pleasant to 
taste but very unwholesome, as it is 
an acid oxalate, which, veterinarians 
say, is poisonous to horses and 
sheep. Flowers dicecious, in erect, 
interrupted, panicled racemes, the 
staminate ones conspicuously yellow 
because of the out-thrust, pollen- 
loaded anthers, the fertile ones with 
reddish calyx-lobes and feathery, 
crimson stigmas. Achene three- 
angled, brown, exceeding the calyx- 
lobes. Sorrel seed is a frequent 
Fie. 56.—Field Sorrel (Rumex : ° . 
in. impurity of commercial seeds, par- 
ticularly of alsike clover, from which 
it is especially difficult to separate. (Fig. 56.) 
Means of control 
Cultivate and enrich the ground, correcting its acid condition 
with heavy applications of lime. Grain crops infested with Sorrel 
are so robbed of moisture as to yield very poor returns; they may 
be helped by a spray of Iron sulfate applied just as the weed comes 
into bloom; the rootstocks take no harm, but much of the leaf sur- 
face is destroyed and seed development prevented for that season. 
Give surface cultivation, after harvest, exposing the fibrous root- 
stocks and destroying the leaf-growth, and also stirring dormant 
seeds into life. Reseed heavily, smothering the weed with strong 
grasses or clover. 
