Identification difficulty: Beginner
Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm going to try and get this post up early so I can go out drinking :). I'm not Irish, but who does't love a good beer? (Note: I said a GOOD beer. Not that swill they dye green and pour out by the barrel-full!)
In honor of the occasion, I'd like to talk about how to identify common yellow wood sorrel, sometimes called the American Shamrock.
Wood sorrel isn't a shamrock, as a shamrock is a type of clover (Latin genus: Trifolium), and wood sorrel is part of the genus Oxalis. Then again, there is some confusion about what a shamrock actually is! You see, we associate the classic "3 heart" shape with shamrocks, yet no clover actually has this shape. Clovers are all 3 ovals! Instead, sorrels (Oxalis species) have the 3 hearts.
So who knows, maybe wood sorrel really is a shamrock after all?
As I've mentioned before, wood sorrel holds a special place in my heart. It's the first wild food I ever ate, that I didn't harvest with my mother or one of my grandmothers. No member of my family ever pronounced it as safe, I never picked it with them. I watched other children enjoy it, and picked and ate it for myself. They called it lemon clover. I ate it without hesitation, rather a dangerous precedent when your "expert" is an 8-year old, but it all turned out all right in the end.
Anyway, wood sorrel is easy to identify, and grows throughout North America. It also tastes great, and is a very versatile ingredient in the kitchen, all-in-all, a perfect plant for beginners to forage.
One small note of caution: Oxalis species contain oxalic acid, and shouldn't be eaten by those with kidney or liver diseases, or by those with certain autoimmune diseases, like Rheumatoid arthritis.
On to identification . . .
