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| Oxalis, Wood Sorrel | ||||||||||||
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Oxalis acetosella | ||||||||||||
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Oxalis is the largest genus in the wood sorrel family Oxalidaceae. Of the approximately 900 known species in the Oxalidaceae, 800 belong to Oxalis. Many of the species are known as Wood Sorrel or Woodsorrel. The genus occurs throughout most of the world, except for the polar areas; species diversity is particularly rich in tropical Brazil and Mexico, and in South Africa.
These plants are annual or perennial. The leaves are divided into three to ten or more round, heart-shaped or lanceolate leaflets, arranged in a whorl with all the leaflets of roughly equal size. The majority of species have three leaflets; in these species, the leaves are superficially similar to those of some clovers, though clovers differ in having the leaflets not in a whorl, and of unequal size with two smaller side leaflets and one larger central leaflet. The flowers have five petals, usually fused at the base, and ten stamens; the petal colour varies from white to pink, red or yellow. The fruitIn botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. In cuisine, when discussing fruit as food, the term usually refers to just those plant fruits that are sweet and fleshy, examples of which would be plum, apple, and or is a small capsuleThe word capsule (from the Latin capsula a small box), has many similar meanings in English: In botany, a capsule is a type of dry fruit as in the poppy, iris, foxglove, etc. See Capsule (fruit). In botany, a capsule is another term for the sporangium of containing several seedThis writeup is about biological seeds; for the Buddhist metaphor, see bija. A seed is the ripened ovule of gymnosperm or angiosperm plants. The importance of the seed relative to more primitive forms of reproduction and dispersal is attested to by the sus. The rootFor other meanings of root, see Root (disambiguation). In vascular plants, roots form the portions of a plant which generally lie below the level of the soil (cf. stem, rhizome). But this is not always characteristic for a root, since a root can also be as are often tuberA tuber is a thickened part of a stem or branch, usually, though not always, subterranean, such as a potato. This should not be confused with a tuberous root such as a Jicama or Dahlia which is a similarly swollen root. See Rhizome.ous, and several species also reproduce vegetatively by production of bulbThis article is about a botanical term. For electric bulb see instead: light bulb. Bulb" is one of very few words in the English language that does not rhyme with anything. See: List of English words without rhymes. A bulb is an underground vertical shootils which detatch to produce new plants.