Localities. — By way-sides, in waste places, and in pastures; too common. 
Perennial. — Flowers in July and August. 
Root tapering, running deeply and perpendicularly into the 
ground, simple or branched, of a dirty brown colour on the outside, 
yellowish within. Stems from 2 to 3 feet high, upright, branched, 
solid, round, deeply furrowed, leafy, roughish upwards. Leaves 
all petiolate, smooth, except on the under surface where the veins 
and also the petioles are rough ; radical ones very large, broad, 
and more or less heart-shaped at the base ; those of the stem nar- 
rower and acute, the uppermost spear-shaped, and tapering at both 
ends. Clusters elongated, of numerous, many-flowered whorls, 
which are near together, except a few of the lower ones, which are 
more distant and leafy. Enlarged Petals oblong, blunt, veiny, 
with about 3 teeth on each margin, one of them also bearing a 
brown or reddish tubercle, of a smaller proportion than in most 
species. Seed rather large, egg-shaped, acute, with 3 sharp angles. 
The broad, blunt radical leaves, and the oblongo-triangular form 
of the enlarged petals, will distinguish this from the other species. 
It is a most troublesome weed, being very tenaceous of growth 
by its roots, and producing a great increase of seed. It can be only 
conquered by stubbing up the root ; mowing is to little purpose. 
Swift seems to have been aware of this when he wrote the 
following lines : — 
My lore for gentle Dermot faster grows 
Than yon tall Dock, that rises to thy nose : 
Cut down the Dock, ’twill rise again ; but know 
Love rooted out, again will never glow. 
Dr. Withering observes, that Fallow Deer eat both this and 
Ruinex acutus with avidity, biting it close to the root, so that it is 
very rare to see a Dock growing in a deer park. 
Il has been remaiked, lhat the Dock is never found to prosper in bad or un- 
fertile soils. Dr. Keith, in his General View of the Agriculture of Aberdeen- 
shire, at p. 443, relates an Anecdote of a man who, some years ago, took a 
small faim in the division of Marr, Aberdeenshire. When the m in entered to 
it, at the usual time, viz. Whitsunday, he found lhat there was not a weed of the 
Dock kind on the faim. At Candlemas, or nine months after, he called on the 
proprietor, and apprized him that he should leave it. The Gentleman asked him, 
“ W hy he gave up a farm before he saw what crop he could raise on it?” He 
replied, “ Sir, there was not a Dockan” (the provincial name for Dock) *' on it 
at Whitsunday. I brought Dockans from different places, and have planted 
them, but they have not answered at all ; and L know that what will not grow 
Dockans cannot grow corn.” This self-taught botanist, observes Dr. Keith, 
was perfectly right; for the farm was really a had one. 
In the north of England Docks are sometimes boiled as food for pigs; and the 
broad leaves of this species were formerly much used for the wrapping up of 
butter, and hence the plant was called Butter-dock. — A parasitic tungus, 
AEcidium rubellum, Pers., one of the most beautiful of the genus, is occasion- 
ally found in perlection on the leaves of this, and 2 or 3 other species in the 
neighbourhood of the Cherwel) and the Isis, near Oxford. 1 have also found 
it, very fine, on Rumex ascetosa, on the south side of Shotover Hill. I Ins 
beautiful parasite is well represented in the late Mr. Puiuox’s excellent •' Mid- 
land Flora,” v. iii. t. 26. 
