Rumex hastatus Seeds | Hastate-leaved Dock
LATIN NAME: Rumex hastatus
COMMON NAME: Hastate-Leaved Dock
Plant Profile
Hastate-Leaved Dock is a shrubby dock of the dry Himalayan slopes, an evergreen subshrub up to a metre across with woody, branching stems and bluish, arrowhead-shaped leaves. Its small flowers grow in branching heads and turn into three-winged fruits, each with a papery edge that catches the light.
It grows in rock crevices and on stony banks where the monsoon rain drains away at once, and its sap is sharply sour, like most of its family. In the garden it is a plant for scree and hot walls, where its foliage colour is the whole point. The woody base lives several years and renews its shoots each spring, so a single plant thickens into a small silver fountain with age. Seedlings grow slowly through their first year, forming a tight rosette before the woody stems appear in the second.
Science & Biotechnology
Within Rumex, a genus mostly of weedy docks and sorrels, this Himalayan species is one of the woody, drought-adapted members, and it appears in regional floras and ecology papers on the dry inner valleys of the Himalaya. Its leaf shape, with two backward-pointing lobes at the base, is the hastate form that gives the species its name.
Like other docks it contains oxalic acid in quantity, and its traditional use as a sour herb or medicine is bounded by that chemistry. Chemical surveys of the Himalayan docks group it with the sour-leaved species, and its volatile oil carries the same green, sharp note that the family is known for.
Uses & Benefits
In the garden it is a specimen for the driest, hottest rock garden, cascading over a wall or spilling from a scree in full sun. Its blue-green foliage is unique among the docks, and it associates well with Mediterranean and steppe plants of similar tastes.
Its traditional uses in the Himalaya are local and its oxalate content is high, so it is grown as an ornamental rather than an edible. Against dark green conifers or a warm brick wall, its foliage reads almost turquoise, a colour no ordinary dock can offer, and it stays neat without pruning. Its fruits, with their three papery wings, hold on the plant well into winter and catch the low sun like small lanterns.
Growing from Seed
Sow the three-winged seeds shallowly, about half a centimetre deep, in a gritty, free-draining mix in spring.
Keep the sowing warm and only just moist; germination is quick in warmth and the seedlings grow woody fast.
Pot them on into deep pots, since the roots run, and plant out into sharp drainage in the hottest position available; established plants want no watering at all. It takes a year to make its character; cut back hard after flowering in the second season to keep the plant from flowering itself bare, and a top-dressing of gravel around the crown in autumn keeps the neck dry through winter.
Our Take
A dock rethought by the dry Himalaya: woody, blue-leaved and three-winged, at home in the hottest scree you can give it.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Hastate-Leaved Dock often pair it with these related subjects: