The Purple Shamrock..

I am sure I inherited this love for plants from my dad. And then again, there was my roommate back in college who added some more love for plants in me. The first time that I remember buying plants was with this roommate of mine. We happened to visit a newly opened nursery near our hostel to buy plants to decorate our hostel room. I know that’s silly. I mean who spends money on decorating hostel rooms. At least none whom I knew back in my college. But sometimes silly activities that you indulge in creates beautiful memories, don’t they?

Of all the plants that I can recall buying that day, there was this one plant with purple, delicate heart-shaped leaves and tiny flowers. Yes, you guessed that right. It’s Oxalis Triangularis, also known as Purple Shamrock or False Shamrock or Wood Sorell or the Love Plant. We were so much in love with this Love Plant that when we left hostel, we bought along with us baby plants from this mother plant.

Five years passed by but this plant never ceased to amaze me and it now sits on my window sill spreading its butterfly-like leaves during the day in response to light and closing them as the sun goes down exhibiting a magical process called “Photonasty”.

Oxalis Triangularis is perennial plant belonging to the family “Oxalidaceae”.The leaves are deep maroon in colour and generally trifoliate(Latin, tres “three”+folium”leaf”) resembling Shamrock-a form of clover. As the name references, this plant belongs to the genus “Oxalis”, the members of which contain Oxalic Acid giving a sour taste to the leaves and the flowers. The leaves generally have three sessile glabrous leaflets ranging in shapes from obtriangular to obovate-triangular.

 

O. Triangularis grows from and can be propagated by division of underground plant stem called, corm or bulbo-tuber which serves the purpose of storage organ in this plant helping it to survive adverse climatic conditions. When used for landscaping it grows rapidly filling up spaces with lovely purple hue.

Like other plants that grow from corm, this plant goes through periods of regular dormancy which may last from few weeks to few months depending on the cultivar. During this period everything above the soil wilts completely and conceals itself in corms below. But if you resume caring it revives back to reward you with abundance of foliage and bloom, teaching an important life lesson “No matter how hard times are, don’t lose hope; just sit back for a while, take a deep breath and get hold of the accelerator again”.