SORREL, SORREL VINE, etc., are the like names of several unre lated plants having acidulous or °sour') foliage. The field or sheep sorrel is the Rutnex aceto sella, a common pasture weed, naturalized from Europe, with halberd-shaped leaves, impreg nated with oxalic acid, slender panicled ra cemes of delicate dicecious flowers, with six parted green or reddish calyces. It spreads widely by creeping rootstocks and in late sum mer colors large patches of dry fields and hill sides by its crowded rusty-hued flower stalks and foliage. This species, R. acetosa, and particularly R. scutatus, which is cultivated for the purpose in Europe, are used for salads, soups and as vegetables. They are cooling, diuretic and anti-scorbutic plants. The wood sorrel may be any one of the American species of low giants with succulent tripartite leaves and obcordate leaflets and pretty soli tary or umbellate five-parted flowers, white, pink or yellow, and with sharply acid sap. In dian sorrel is the roselle, an East Indian mal low (Hibiscus sabdariffa) cultivated in the tropics for its acidulous calyces which are made into refreshing drinks, jellies and tarts. Switch
sorrel is Dodoncra viscosa, a widely distributed tropical shrub, with acid and bitter foliage. Climbing sorrel is the shrubby Begonia scan dens, which climbs by rootlets. The sorrel vine is a low, tendril-bearing climber (Cissus acida) of tropical America. Oxydrndurn ar boreum is the sour-wood or sorrel-tree of the southern United States. It is a smooth-barked tree of the heather family, with alternate oval leaves, deciduous and sour in taste. The five parted cylindrical flowers are in one-sided, slender racemes and in terminal panicles. They have a honey-like odor, and are food for bees. The capsules are pyramidal, five-valved and a soft, pale green in color. The leaves are occa sionally used to furnish a black dye, and the wood serves for tool-handles, bearings of ma chinery and for turning.