Rumex sagittatusThunb.

climbing dockclimbing sorrelrambling dockred sorrel

WFO wfo-0001101172 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Arnim Littek
fig. a Arnim Littek, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205973416
Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Arnim Littek
fig. b Arnim Littek, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202280143
Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Arnim Littek
fig. c Arnim Littek, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198042478
Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Di Turner
fig. d Di Turner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194970135
Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Heidi Meudt
fig. e Heidi Meudt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192435640
Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Tony Wills
fig. f Tony Wills, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 192578043
Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Arnim Littek
fig. g Arnim Littek, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194247475
Rumex sagittatus, photographed by Joe Dillon
fig. h Joe Dillon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191479013

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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Rumex sagittatus is native: Botswana, Cape Provinces, Eswatini, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Zambia, Zimbabwe BotswanaCape ProvincesEswatiniFree StateKwaZulu-NatalLesothoMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Rumex sagittatus, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Botswana BOT AFRICA
Cape Provinces CPP
Eswatini SWZ
Free State OFS
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Lesotho LES
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

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 72 in flower of 386 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Rumex sagittatus 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. 72 of 386 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 2 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 sagittata Johnson & Briggs
  • Rumex scandens Burch.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.