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FLORA: Plantain leads us to dock

Posted on July 14, 2011July 14, 2011 by Staff
PHOTO BY KEN MOORE. Papery dock seeds are beautiful as they slowly turn from green to copper brown.

By Ken Moore
Flora Columnist

You know, folks, I generally have two or more stories and photos queued up for Flora ahead of submission deadlines. Once in a while, I unexpectedly happen upon something that engages me enough to write on a topic at the last minute to slip in ahead of the stories already in the queue.

In the last several months, I have been responding more and more to comments and inquiries from Citizen readers. These folks, in sharing their own “closer look” observations, often steer me into an unintended next story. Flora is gradually evolving into a series of reader-inspired columns, for which I am appreciative.

This happened just this past week. In response to my description of plantain, Citizen reader Allies Scales shared that plantain leaves reminded her of the dock leaves she remembered finding in England, invariably in close proximity to nettle patches, since, as children, she and her friends learned that crushing dock leaves and rubbing them on the skin took the hurt out of close encounters with stinging nettles. Her curiosity led her to wonder if perhaps plantain and dock, both useful medicinal weeds, may be in the same plant family. She was also curious about other complimentary plant pairs that may grow close to one another.

So, thank you, Allies, for focusing my attention on dock for this week’s Flora.

How convenient that my wild yard-garden is filled with dock, which I have considered featuring for years but has just never ended up in the queue.

Common dock, Rumex crispus, is frequently called curly dock, because its giant leaves are curly or wavy along the margins.

The greenish flowers of dock almost immediately develop into the characteristic winged seed of buckwheat. Dock is in the smartweed family, Polygonaceae, not the plantain family. The smartweed family contains the well-known buckwheat. The buckwheat-like winged seeds of curly dock are beautiful as they turn from pale green to crispy burnt-brown colors. To me, they appear as tiny jewels of form and color during the transition.

For years, I have been cutting the stems of dock’s clusters of greenish flowers and ripening seeds to enjoy singly or with other plants as indoor flower arrangements. Like so many weedy plants, when we step back and take a thoughtful look we can find amazing beauty.

I vividly remember an older friend visiting in the springtime, running around the yard like a madman, collecting fresh leaves of our dock plants, scolding us that we were letting all those fresh, healthy green leaves go to waste. Now, years later, I’m much more appreciative of his “wild weeds” wisdom.

Leaves in the early spring, fresh or cooked, are rich in protein and vitamin A. If leaves are tough, they need to be boiled a couple of times and the liquid tossed.

Dock also has numerous medicinal attributes – too many to describe in this limited space.

And yes, Allies, there are other companion plants growing nearby, like our native jewelweed, reverently held as a cure for poison ivy, but that’s a Flora story queued up for sometime in the future.

Email Ken Moore at flora@carrborocitizen.com.

Find previous Ken Moore Citizen columns at The Annotated Flora.

PHOTO BY KEN MOORE. Dock flower/seed stems stand tall above large, basal curly leaves.

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