Rumex bucephalophorus (red dock)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis — fig. a Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-25 / obs. 190816488

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Davide Puddu — fig. b Davide Puddu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189502430

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Alessia Guggisberg — fig. c Alessia Guggisberg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188854493

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Rafael Medina — fig. d Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187650994

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Crap Fou — fig. e Crap Fou, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186059389

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Paulo Galvão — fig. f Paulo Galvão, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184755905

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Daniel Cahen — fig. g Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183317718

Rumex bucephalophorus, photographed by Yves Bas — fig. h Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137413342

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 25 botanical countries

Native distribution of Rumex bucephalophorus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Albania	ALB	EUROPE
Baleares	BAL
Corse	COR
France	FRA
Greece	GRC
Italy	ITA
Kriti	KRI
Portugal	POR
Sardegna	SAR
Sicilia	SIC
Spain	SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe	TUE
Algeria	ALG	AFRICA
Azores	AZO
Canary Is.	CNY
Libya	LBY
Madeira	MDR
Morocco	MOR
Tunisia	TUN
Cyprus	CYP	ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is.	EAI
Lebanon-Syria	LBS
Palestine	PAL
Sinai	SIN
Türkiye	TUR

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 120 in flower of 148 examined

63%

100%

94%

81%

75%

83%

Proportion of examined Rumex bucephalophorus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	5	8	63%	31% to 86%
Feb	10	10	100%	72% to 100%
Mar	29	31	94%	79% to 98%
Apr	38	47	81%	67% to 90%
May	33	44	75%	61% to 85%
Jun	5	6	83%	44% to 97%
Jul	0	2	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Rumex bucephalophorus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 120 of 148 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 29 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Acetosa aculeata Chaz.
Acetosa bucephalophora Fourr.
Acetosa cretica (Rech.f.) Holub
Bucephalophora aculeata Pau
Bucephalophora aculeata f. plagiotropica P.Silva
Lapathum bucephalophorum (L.) Lam.
Rumex bucephalophorus f. canariensis (Steinh.) Beck
Rumex bucephalophorus f. stenocarpus Beck
Rumex bucephalophorus subsp. aegaeus Rchb.f.
Rumex bucephalophorus subsp. fruticescens Bornm.
Rumex bucephalophorus subsp. graecus (Steinh.) Rech.f.
Rumex bucephalophorus subsp. hipporegii (Steinh.) Rech.f.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. aculeatus Gürke
Rumex bucephalophorus var. aegaeus (Rchb.f.) Maire
Rumex bucephalophorus var. canariensis Steinh.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. crassissimus Maire
Rumex bucephalophorus var. creticus Steinh.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. fruticescens (Bornm.) Press
Rumex bucephalophorus var. gallicus Steinh.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. graecus Steinh.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. hipporegii Steinh.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. hispanicus Steinh.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. massiliensis Steinh.
Rumex bucephalophorus var. stenocarpus (Beck) Press

and 5 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.