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Updated: June 27, 2025
No Irishman who knows the little oxalis or wood-sorrel could wish for a more beautiful floral emblem of the Emerald Isle, or dream of letting the vulgar Saxon intruder the dwarf clover take its place. Perhaps it is the Ulstermen who have set up the foreign "Dutch" clover to replace the true shamrock, the wood-sorrel. These changes are easily made.
Jane joining me, we had a most charming ramble down a narrow track to the bed of the stream which rushes down from the snow-covered ridge guarding the Lolab. Here we crossed into a splendid belt of gaunt silver firs, the first I have seen here; whitish yellow marsh-marigolds and a most vivid "smalt" blue forget-me-not with large flowers were abundant, also an oxalis very like our own wood-sorrel.
The plains were ornamented by the flowers of a pink wood-sorrel, wild peas, oenotherae, and geraniums; and the birds began to lay their eggs. Numerous Lamellicorn and Heteromerous insects, the latter remarkable for their deeply sculptured bodies, were slowly crawling about; while the lizard tribe, the constant inhabitants of a sandy soil, darted about in every direction.
Overhead there was no ceiling but the sky itself, flaked with little clouds of April whitely wandering over it. The floor was made of soft low grass, mixed with moss and primroses; and in a niche of shelter moved the delicate wood-sorrel.
Thus the delicate white flowers of the wood-sorrel are known in Wales as "fairy bells," from a belief once current that these tiny beings were summoned to their moonlight revels and gambols by these bells. In Ireland they were supposed to ride to their scenes of merrymaking on the ragwort, hence known as the "fairies' horse."
From the shape of its flower, the trumpet-flowered wood-sorrel has been called St. Cecilia's flower, whose festival is kept on November 22. The Nigella damascena, popularly known as love-in-a-mist, was designated St. Catherine's flower, "from its persistent styles," writes Dr. Prior, "resembling the spokes of her wheel."
Though you may be choke-full of science, not one in twenty of you knows where to find the wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis, which grow in the next wood, or on the down three miles off, or what the bog-bean and wood-sage are good for.
An eminent chemist informs me, that he has made experiments with the oxalic acid, and found that when this was also concentrated, it has similar effects; insomuch that no animal can contain a grain of it if taken into the throat or stomach: and thus might we also be led to consider the elegant, and in itself harmless, wood-sorrel, as a poisonous plant.
Overhead there was no ceiling but the sky itself, flaked with little clouds of April whitely wandering over it. The floor was made of soft low grass, mixed with moss and primroses; and in a niche of shelter moved the delicate wood-sorrel.
'On aged roots, with bright green mosses clad, Dwells the wood-sorrel, with its bright thin leaves Heart-shaped and triply folded, and its root Creeping like beaded coral; whilst around Flourish the copse's pride, anemones, With rays like golden studs on ivory laid Most delicate; but touch'd with purple clouds, Fit crown for April's fair but changeful brow.
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