Oxalis herrerae or succulenta

Liz Waterman lizwat@earthlink.net
Wed, 02 Feb 2005 22:26:26 PST
Dear Mary Sue,

Thank you, thank you for your help.
I think that O. herrerae is probably the correct name even if more 
awkward to pronounce.

If it is true that O. succulenta produces seeds, then my plant is 
unlikely to be   O. succulenta.  I've had it well over ten years, it 
died to the ground in the 1990 freeze and took a year or so to 
reemerge.  Never has it set a fruit.  It appears to be a multibranched 
plant but it really consists of many single crooked stems coming from 
the ground and is about 3 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet tall.  The lower part 
of the stems is dark brown and scaly, the upper part fleshy, smooth. It 
is usually evergreen and  winter blooming.  It is very easy to break off 
a piece of the brittle stem and root it  in any medium, even plain 
water.  A young plant remains single stemed and smoothfor several years 
so there is considerable difference between a young and mature plant.  I 
have no idea what the mature roots look like.
I also grow Oxalis carnosa ?=megolorhiza which certainly does reseed all 
too freely.  Here, too, there is a similiar difference between young and 
older plants. 

Oxalis succulenta Barn.
 From Chile
Description: Glabrous, root thick, stem short, simple, thick, scaly, 
scales pubescent; petioles fleshy, terete, erect, glabrous. Leaves = 3 
leaflets, broad obcordate, fleshy, apex slightly emarginate, pubescent 
below, above glabrous, leaflets sessile. Peduncle = erect, succulent, 
terete, glabrous, apex dichotomous, multiflowered, flowers small, 
yellow, on thin pedicels, petals twice the size of sepals. Seeds = 
striate, capsule pubescent, many seeded.



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