© Forest & Kim Starr · CC BY 3.0
Wikimedia Commons — CC, credited & licensed per image
Oxalidaceae family
Pink Woodsorrel (var. corymbosa) Oxalis debilis var. corymbosa variety
Pink Woodsorrel (var. corymbosa) is an introduced perennial herb, found in Hawaii, the lower 48 states, and the Pacific Basin. It grows to 0.2 ft.
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
- Hardiness
- ≥ zone 9 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
- Height
- 0.2 ft
- Lifespan
- Perennial
- Foliage
- Broadleaf
In the garden
Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Living mulch / groundcover — Low, ground-hugging grower — can carpet bare soil as a living mulch, shading out weeds and holding moisture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a
guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.
Wildlife & pollinators
How pollinator value is scored →❧ Caterpillar hosts ~3 caterpillar species
Oxalis supports ~3 caterpillar species.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.
Recorded feeding on Oxalis in North America, including:
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Related plants
More Oxalis →
Native
Alpine Woodsorrel
Oxalis alpina
●○○○○ 
Native
Barrelier's Woodsorrel
Oxalis barrelieri
●○○○○ Native
Blue Woodsorrel
Oxalis caerulea
●○○○○ 
Native
Broadleaf Woodsorrel
Oxalis latifolia
●○○○○ Native
Coamo
Oxalis rugeliana
●○○○○ 
Native
Common Yellow Oxalis
Oxalis stricta
●○○○○ Same genus / family, ranked by ecological value — from the PlantKey catalog
Sources for this entry (12) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[06] Photos — Wikimedia Commons — CC, credited per image
[07] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[08] Foliage — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[09] Height — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[11] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[12] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
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