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Polygonaceae family

Toothed Dock Rumex dentatus

Early-season nectar — Flowers in a late-winter / early-spring window when few other plants in our catalog bloom — valuable early forage for pollinators (relative to our catalog's bloom coverage).

Toothed Dock is an introduced annual herb, found in Canada and the lower 48 states. It blooms Mar – Oct.

⚠ Invasive here — plant a native instead USDA + GBIF

Toothed Dock is flagged invasive in the U.S. These natives fill a similar niche — same growth habit, bloom season, height, and region — so you keep the look and feed local wildlife instead of spreading a problem.

Husk Tomato
Native
Husk Tomato
Physalis pubescens
●●○○○
Scouringrush Horsetail
Native
Scouringrush Horsetail
Equisetum hyemale
●○○○○
Creeping Woodsorrel
Native
Creeping Woodsorrel
Oxalis corniculata
●○○○○
Spiral Ditchgrass
Native
Spiral Ditchgrass
Ruppia cirrhosa
○○○○○
Matched on growth habit · bloom months · mature height · shared U.S. range (USDA + GBIF) — a starting point, not a prescription.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
Lifespan
Annual
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Mar – Oct — 66 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
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 ~54 caterpillar species

Rumex supports ~54 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 strong genus.

Recorded feeding on Rumex in North America, including:

Actebia fennica · owlet moth Agnorisma badinodis · Pale-Banded Dart Agrotis gladiaria · Swordsman Dart Amphipyra tragopoginis · Mouse Moth Anavitrinella pampinaria · Common Gray Ancylostomia stercorea · snout moth
+ 8 more species →
Apantesis nais · Nais Tiger Moth Argyrogramma verruca · Golden Looper Autographa californica · Alfalfa Looper Moth Calothysanis amaturaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Calybites phasianipennella · leaf-blotch miner moth Chalceria rubida · gossamer-winged butterfly Chionodes discoocellella · Eyeringed Chionodes Moth Chionodes ochreostrigella · twirler moth
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).
Wildlife & visitors 1 bird

Open records of who else uses Toothed Dock — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 bird species (fruit, seed, browse):

Grus monacha · Hooded Crane
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (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.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (20) 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 — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[11] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[13] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[14] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[18] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[19] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[20] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
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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