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Wood sorrel family (Oxalidaceae)
Small, delicately downy perennial, of heights 5-15 cm. Flower pedicels and leaves grow up from thin, creeping rhizome. Compound leaves of three leaflets pale green and long-stalked. Flowers white with veins, arranged singly, on hairy pedicels. Seeds expelled for distances of around 2 m. Flowers Apr.-Jun.
Grows on mesic to moist, nutrient-poor to nutrient-rich soils. Hence broad ecological amplitude, though shade-tolerant and will grow in mixed/coniferous, oak-lime-hornbeam, riparian and alder forests, as well as in boreal spruce forests on bogs. Edible, despite content of oxalic acid. Leaves ”close up”, i.e. fold down, for the night.
Descriptions devised by the team at the Independent Department of Forest Botany, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, i.e. L. Witkowska-Żuk, K. Marciszewska, W. Ciurzycki, A. Obidziński and P. Zaniewski.
