The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Oxalis pes-caprae
Also called African Wood Sorrel, Englishweed, South African Wood Sorrel, Buttercup Oxalis, Drooping Wood Sorrel, Large Yellow Soursob, Soursob
Bermuda buttercup is a yellow-flowered bulbous plant from southern Africa that has become a hard-to-remove weed in many warm regions. Its key to growing it is that it spreads by small underground bulbs, so it is best kept in a container or contained in the garden.
Oxalis pes-caprae is a species of tristylous yellow-flowering plant in the wood sorrel family Oxalidaceae. Oxalis cernua is a less common synonym for this species. It is commonly known as African wood-sorrel, Bermuda buttercup, Bermuda sorrel, buttercup oxalis, Cape sorrel, English weed, goat's-foot, sourgrass, soursob, or soursop; Afrikaans: suring; Arabic: hommayda (حميضة).
Some of the most common names for the plant reference its sour taste owing to oxalic acid present in its tissues. Indigenous to South Africa, the plant has become a pest plant in different parts of the world that is difficult to eradicate because of how it propagates through underground bulbs.
The plant is palatable and in modest quantities is reasonably harmless to humans and livestock. In South Africa it is a traditional ingredient in dishes such as waterblommetjiebredie ('water flower stew').
Wood-sorrel · Silver Shamrock · Barrelier's woodsorrel · Creeping woodsorrel · Scurvygrass · Crimson woodsorrel · Broadleaf woodsorrel · Nieuwoudtville Sorrel · Blackspot Sorrel · Mountain woodsorrel · Redwood-sorrel · Purple woodsorrel
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Oxalis pes-caprae by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
