Dock

Dock is the name given to a widespread group of broad-leaved wayside weeds in the genus Rumex, which also holds the sorrels, and in the family Polygonaceae, to which rhubarb belongs. Older botanists put the docks in a genus of their own, Lapathum, from a Greek word for cleansing, after their use as purges. A dock plant has large leaves at its base and smaller ones up branching flower stalks about three feet tall, which carry dense whorls of drooping flowers, light green to pinkish. Each flower ripens into a papery, heart-shaped, rusty-brown pod holding a single seed. Like rhubarb, the docks are rich in tannin and have astringent roots, and the young leaves and shoots of several species can be cooked as a pot-herb, though they taste poor and are slightly laxative. Their lore is crowded with the fair folk: the Anglo-Saxons used dock against elf shot, the unseen weapon by which elves were thought to bring disease; in Scotland bitter dock went into charms to undo faery spells laid on children; and the trows of Orkney were said to ride its stems like horses. In Ireland a woman who wanted a child wore a bag of dock seeds tied to her left arm, a charm Cunningham repeats, and young Irish women used dooryard dock to divine whom they would marry. Culpeper, quoted by Grieve, put all the docks under Jupiter.