Many of us have happy childhood memories of eating the sour wood sorrel seed pods. The sour clover shaped leaves, yellow flowers and mini cucumber shaped seed pods are all edible. Barbara Salvatore commented that she adds wood sorrel to her lemonade, to salads and soups and as a garnish on cheese. Wood sorrel in addition to lemonade makes a nice hot or cold tea. Kay Young garnishes her potato salad with the flowers and leaves. Sharon Ohmberger shared a recipe from the Gather Cookbook for wood sorrel mini cream tarts combining wood sorrel, sugar, sour cream and greek yogurt on a graham cracker crust. My dislike of soup is well known, but give wood sorrel soup a google~I was surprised how many recipes there were. Still my favorite is to eat the thirst quenching seed pods during a long hot day of gardening.
People aren’t the only ones who like wood sorrel. Gladys Jeurink, an old respected gardener in my town, advised me to leave the wood sorrel in my garden because the rabbits prefer it over other plants, so they tend to leave your other plants alone. Wood sorrel has vitamin C, but also oxalic acid (as do vegetable such as spinach and broccoli) so folks who suffer from gout, rheumatism or kidney stones should avoid it and leave more for our rabbit friends. How do you eat wood sorrel?
