[Englishing of sorrel de boys, superseding WOODSOUR: see WOOD sb.1 and SORREL sb.1 (3 a): so called from the sour taste of the leaves, resembling that of sorrel.] The common name of Oxalis Acetosella, a low-growing woodland plant having delicate trifoliate leaves and small white flowers streaked with purple, appearing in spring.
1525. Grete Herball, I. (1529), C vj. Alleluya, wood sorell or cocowes meate.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, IV. xliii. 502. Woode Sorrel is a lowe or base herbe, without stalkes.
1634–5. Brereton, Trav. (Chetham Soc.), 192. I took a good quantity of mithridate and wood-sorrel.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist., III. 166. Wood sorrel,… being boiled up with it [milk], and coagulating, the whole is put into casks, or deer-skins, and kept under ground to be eaten in winter [in Lapland].
1888. T. W. Reid, Life W. E. Forster (ed. 2), I. ii. 42. The first appearance of cuckoo or swallow, of wood sorrel or anemone.
1899. R. Bridges, Idle Flowers, vii. Woodsorrel’s pencilled veil.
b. Applied with defining words to other species of Oxalis; also in the West Indies to species of Begonia.
1770. J. R. Forster, trans. Kalm’s Trav. N. Amer., I. 201. The yellow wood sorrel, or Oxalis corniculata.
1855. Delamer, Kitch. Gard. (1861), 49. The Oxalis crenata, or Notched Wood-sorrel, a tuberous-rooted esculent, cultivated in Peru under the name of Oca.
1858. A. Irvine, Handbk. Brit. Plants, 754. O[xalis] stricta, Linn. Upright Yellow Wood-sorrel.
1864. Grisebach, Flora W. Ind. Isl., 787/2. Sorrel, wood, Begonia acutifolia.
