SHEEP’S SORREL — continued. 
The old Greek name Xanadov, lapathon, became the Latin lapathum and the Italian 
lapazio , and this last being mistaken for la Passio, the Passion of Our Lord, the 
plant got the names of Patientia and Patience. The name Dock is the Early English 
docce, the Danish dukke , meaning a bunch or flock of flax or hemp, the equivalent of 
the French bourre. This was first applied to the Burdocks ( Arctium ), the burs of 
which are often entangled in wool, and seems to have been afterwards extended to 
any broad-leaved plants. As to Sorrel and the Scottish Sourack , they are simply the 
Teutonic equivalents of the Latin Oxalis and the French Oseille, meaning sour or 
acid, as also does the officinal Acetosella. The prefix “ Sheep’s ” was, no doubt, 
suggested by the abundance of the small Rumex Acetosella Linne on sandy uplands 
where sheep are pastured. 
The genus Rumex comprises biennial and perennial herbs with stout tapering 
rhizomes and usually fluted aerial stems. The flowers are arranged in whorls on a 
raceme or panicle and are cyclic, the perianth consisting of two alternating whorls 
of three leaves each, the two whorls differing but little in texture or colour, though 
the inner enlarges considerably in the fruiting stage. Both are commonly deeply 
tinged with red. Stamens and carpels may be present in the same flower or may be 
monoeciously or dioeciously separated. There are six stamens with short, slender 
filaments and basifixed anthers ; but their position, in pairs alternating with the 
inner perianth-leaves, suggests that they are really three branching. The three- 
sided ovary is surmounted by three slender styles spreading horizontally between 
the inner perianth-leaves and terminating in tufted stigmas, indicative of wind- 
pollination. 
The British representatives of the genus may be divided into two groups : the 
Docks, without hastate auricles to their leaves and with flowers almost always 
perfect ; and the Sorrels, with hastate or sagittate leaves and monoecious, dioecious, 
or polygamous flowers. The Sheep’s Sorrel ( R . Acetosella Linne) is a small plant, 
the whole of which is often tinged, especially in autumn, with a deep red. Its 
hastate leaves have silvery stipules. The flowers are some of them perfect, others 
carpellate ; but those produced at the beginning of the season are protogynous, as is 
so often the case with wind-pollinated blossoms, whilst those produced later are 
homogamous or synacmic , i.e. have stamens and stigmas maturing simultaneously. 
The plant is very common on sandy, gravelly, and other siliceous soils, being 
often associated with heather, whortleberries, or such grasses as Nardus stricta L. 
and Agrostis. 
