Rumex obtusifoliusL.

broad-leaved dock

WFO wfo-0000403904 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by Tom Scavo
fig. a Tom Scavo, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 206007000
Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by mefisher
fig. b mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205020123
Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by Jon Mortin
fig. c Jon Mortin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203858446
Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. d Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202502975
Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by Terri Koontz
fig. e Terri Koontz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205344771
Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by Татьяна Фирсова
fig. f Татьяна Фирсова, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204659206
Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by Randy A Nonenmacher
fig. g Randy A Nonenmacher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205059052
Rumex obtusifolius, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. h Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202495577

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 518 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 518 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 13 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 obtusifolia (L.) M.Gómez
  • Lapathum obtusifolium (L.) Moench
  • Lapathum sylvestre Lam.
  • Rumex agrestis (Fr.) Schur
  • Rumex crispatulus Michx.
  • Rumex laevigatus Willd. ex Spreng.
  • Rumex obtusifolius f. grandis Zapal.
  • Rumex obtusifolius f. pseudoagrestis Zapal.
  • Rumex obtusifolius subsp. agrestis (Fr.) Danser
  • Rumex obtusifolius subsp. obtusifolius
  • Rumex obtusifolius var. agrestis Fr.
  • Rumex obtusifolius var. transiens (Simonk.) K.Kubát
  • Rumex sylvestris var. transiens Simonk.

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.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.