OXALIS ACETOSELLA- COMMON WOOD-SORREL. 
Class X. DECANDRIA.— Order V. PENTAGYNIA. 
Natural Order, OXALIDEiE. — THE WOOD-SORREL TRIBE. 
Fig. (a) shows the petals spread ; ( b ) the styles ; (c) the stamens. 
This delicate creeping plant is very generally found throughout Europe. It is a perennial, growing in 
moist shady woods, and producing its flowers in April and May. 
The rhizoma is horizontal, and consists of several fleshy reddish scales, connected by a thread. The 
leaves are ternate, on long, hairy, radical, purplish footstalks ; with the leaflets obcordate and entire, 
drooping in the evening, of a yellowish-green colour, and purplish underneath. The scape, or flower-stalk, 
is about four inches high, slender, furnished with a pair of opposite bracteas, placed considerably below the 
flower, which is bell-shaped, drooping, of a delicate white or pale flesh-colour, and streaked with purplish 
veins. The calyx is cut into five, acute, ovate segments ; petals five, obovate, spreading ; filaments ca- 
pillary, with oblong, furrowed, incumbent anthers ; germen ovate, with five thread-shaped styles, and ob- 
tuse, downy stigmas. The capsule is 5-celled, membranous, and containing two seeds in each cell, and in- 
closed within an elastic arillus, by the bursting of which they are thrown out. 
This plant is called by old Gerarde, wood sour, sour trefoil, stub-wort, and sorrel du bois ; by her- 
balists, alleluya, and cuckoo’s meat, “by reason when it springeth forth and flowereth, the cuckoo singeth 
most ; at which time also alleluya was wont to be sung in churches/’ The names, Alleluya and Lujula, 
appear, however, to be corrupted from the Calabrian, Juliola. 
Qualities and Chemical Properties. — Wood sorrel is inodorous, but possesses a very agreeable 
and refreshing acid taste. Twenty pounds of the fresh plant yielded to Neuman six pounds of juice, from 
which he got two ounces, two drams, and one scruple of the bin-oxalate of potash ; and two ounces, six 
4 drams of an impure saline mass. 
1 The bin-oxalate of potash is one of the three sub-species of oxalate of potash, and exists ready formed 
j in Oxalis Acetosella, Oxalis corniculata, and different species of Rumex, from which it is extracted in some 
a parts of Europe in large quantities. Hence it is known by the name of salt of wood-sorrel, and in this 
| country is sold as essential salt of lemons, mixed with an equal quantity of cream of tartar. It is mentioned 
fl by Duclos in the Memoirs of the French Academy for 1668. Marcgraaf proved that it contained potass; 
I and Scheele discovered its acid to be the oxalic. It may be formed, as Scheele has shown, by dropping 
i potash very gradually into a saturated solution of oxalic acid in water : as soon as the proper quantity of 
1 alkali is added, the bin-oxalate is precipitated. But care must be taken not to add too much alkali, other- 
1 wise no precipitation will take place at all. 
Medical Properties and Uses. — The leaves of this plant are among the most grateful of the 
vegetable acids. The juice of sorrel is sometimes used as an agreeable refreshing drink in fevers, and the 
I leaves boiled in milk form a pleasant whey: but the other vegetable acids are quite as useful and more 
available : beaten up with fine sugar, the leaves make a refreshing and wholesome conserve ; “ its flavour 
resembling green tea.” The leaves in a recent state form a good salad for the scorbutic, and have been 
employed with advantage as an external application to scrofulous ulcers. 
The Oxalides, says Professor Burnett, are acid and slightly astringent plants, especially O. Acetosella, 
| which contains that peculiar and powerful acid, the Oxalic, to which it has given its name. This plant was 
formerly used in medicine, being made into a confection called Conserva Luzulai. Twenty pounds of wood- 
sorrel leaves yield six pounds of juice, from which two ounces six drachms of impure salt may be obtained. 
Since, however, Scheele discovered that oxalic acid may be formed by acting on sugar with nitric acid, his 
process, being far the most economical, has entirely superseded its extraction from the plant. Oxalic acid 
mixed with cream of tartar is sold under the name of salt of lemons, to flavour sauces, and to remove ink-spots 
and iron-moulds. 
The following passage is from the agreeable pen of Charles Lamb : — 
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the 
door. It “gives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated.” But its issues seldom answer to this 
I oracle within. It is so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. But of all the clamorous visi- 
I tations the welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, or 6eems to usher in, a Valentine. As the 
« raven himself was hoarse, that announced the fatal entrance of Duncan, so the knock of the postman on this 
J day is light, airy, and confident. It is less mechanical than on other days ; you will say, “ That is not the 
I post, I am sure.” Visions of love, of cupids, of hymens, and all those delightful eternal common -places, 
I which “having been will always be;” which no school-boy nor school-man can write away; having their 
