Species Oxalis sonderiana
Pictures from Observations
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From the Greek oxys = sharp, sour or acid and (h)als = salt. The plant is frequently consumed for its sour taste caused by the oxalic acid, particularly the flowering stalks of O. pes-caprae. In large quantities the oxalic acid inhibits digestion and in stock leads to the condition 'dikpens' or bloated belly.
For Otto Wilhelm Sonder (1812–1881), German botanist and pharmacist, practising in Hamburg. He accumulated an enormous private herbarium in excess of 250 000 specimens from some of the leading botanists and collectors of his day.
He had a special interest in algae, and wrote an algal supplement to Mueller’s Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae and a major paper on Australian tropical algae. Although he never actually visited the Cape, he co-authored with William Henry Harvey the first three volumes of the seven-volume Flora Capensis. He also wrote Flora Hamburgensis, and was editor and author of several families of Plantae Muellerianae in the journal Linnaea.