Oxalis articulata
Oxalis montana
pink oxalis, pink sorrell, windowbox wood-sorrel
American wood-sorrel, common wood-sorrel, mountain woodsorrel, northern wood sorrel, sleeping-beauty, white wood-sorrel
basal;
petiole 11–30 cm;
leaflets 3, green to purplish abaxially, green adaxially, rounded-obcordate, 18–20 mm, margins densely loosely ciliate, lobed 1/5–1/3 length, lobes apically convex, surfaces evenly strigose-villous to strigose-hirsute, oxalate deposits in dots concentrated mostly toward margins or over whole surface.
basal;
petiole (2.5–)3–9 cm, villous, hairs reddish;
leaflets 3, green, broadly obcordate, 10–16(–20) mm, lobed 1/5 length, lobes apically convex, surfaces glabrous, oxalate deposits absent.
usually umbelliform cymes, less commonly in irregular cymes, 3–12-flowered;
scapes 12–28 cm, sparsely strigose.
1-flowered;
scapes 4–15 cm, glabrous or sparsely villous, hairs reddish.
heterostylous;
sepal apices with 2 orange tubercles;
petals usually purplish rose to red, rarely white, 10–14 mm.
heterostylous;
sepal apices without tubercles;
petals white with orange-yellow spot sub-basally, rose colored band proximally, and prominent rose colored veins, 10–15 mm.
ovoid, 4–8 mm, sparsely strigose.
subglobose, 2–4 mm, glabrous.
= 42.
= 22.
Oxalis articulata
Oxalis montana
Oxalis articulata in the United States commonly has been identified as O. rubra. Oxalis rubra was treated at subspecific rank by A. Lourteig (1982), but subsp. articulata and subsp. rubra have essentially the same native range and occur in similar habitats. Lourteig identified both subspecies in the United States, noting in her key that vestiture is reduced and the sepals are broader in subsp. rubra. Evidence is weak for recognizing more than a single entity. In the Flora of Panama (Lourteig 1980), she recognized only O. articulata, noting that it is naturalized in other parts of America and in the Old World.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Oxalis montana of eastern North America and O. oregana of the Pacific region have sometimes been treated as disjunct geographical taxa of the European (or Eurasian, depending on taxonomic interpretation) O. acetosella Linnaeus. The three are very similar and surely are closely related. Section Acetosellae Reiche also includes the Asian O. griffithii Edgeworth & Hooker f., O. leucolepsis Diels, and O. obtriangulata Maximowicz, as well as O. magellanica G. Forster (South America, New Zealand, Tasmania); the first two of these also have been treated as taxa within O. acetosella (see synonyms in Liu Q. R. and M. F. Watson 2008). Among all these, typical O. acetosella, the two American taxa, and O. magellanica have erect flowers, while those of the strictly Asian taxa are distinctly nodding, perhaps suggesting that the latter are monophyletic.
Oxalis oregana stands apart from O. montana and typical O. acetosella in its larger leaves and flowers and its strigose-villous (versus glabrous) sepals. Each of the three is distinct in petal coloration and this difference between O. acetosella and O. montana is perhaps the only one between them besides the geographical disjunction. In O. montana, the orange-yellow region near the petal base is constricted to a spot (versus a lateral band in typical O. acetosella) and a light and diffuse but distinct rose colored band lies immediately distal to the spot, connecting among the petals to form a circle. Oxalis acetosella in the strict sense occurs from Iceland to southern Europe (and possibly northern Africa), reportedly stretching as a broad band completely across Eurasia to Japan to Korea (J. F. Veldkamp 1971; Liu Q. R. and M. F. Watson 2008). Attributions of O. acetosella to Pakistan and other Himalayan localities apparently are based on plants of O. griffithii.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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