Flowering plant. Photo: Don Wood, south coast, NSW

Line drawing in Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. Vol. 2: 432

Common Name

Yellow Wood-sorrel, Creeping Oxalis

Family

Oxalidaceae

Notes

Introduced forb to 30cm tall, sometimes creeping.  Leaves alternating up the stems, each composed of 3 leaflets, each 0.4-2cm long, 2.4-25mm wide, flat, hairless to hairy, with  a notched or squared off apex.  Flowers yellow, with 5 petals, in umbels of 1-6 flowers on stems arising from the bases of the leaves .

Differs from Oxalis perennans and Oxalis radicosa in the taproot, if developed, is not stout and woody, and it has obvious square-topped outgrowths (stipules) at the bases of the leaf stems.

Note that the description and photo in G.M. Cunningham, WE Mulham, PL Milthorpe and J H Leigh (1981 and later printings) Plants of Western New South Wales page 435 was written before the native species were segregated from Oxalis corniculata.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Oxalis~corniculata