The Macabre Beauty of Bloody Dock
Bloody Dock (Rumex sanguineus var. sanguineus) is named for the blood-red veins in its green fronds. It is also called Bloodwort, Bloody Wood Dock, or for those who don't want to evoke the macabre, Red-Veined Dock.
In the Puget Sound region, it is thought to be best used as a container-plant that can be brought into shelter during winter, or grown as a harvested crop that won't have to make it through the winter. But ours has done fine in the garden sheltered by other plants.
It is from the Mediterranean region & Africa, & reputedly does not like much of a winter chill. But I planted it near a buttercup winterhazel sheltered by an overhanging window, against the wall where it got residual heat from the house, plus morning sun. Spring & summer of its first year it was in splendid form, & come Fall it still seemed okay. For its first Winter, it seemed to have gone to sleep but remained evergreen & pleasant; it did not die back from the cold. Late winter got rather harsh, however, & the Bloody Dock finally did get a raggedy around the tips, as can be seen in the above March portrait just before Spring. But it was still okay even after late freezes, & it bounced back as quick as the weather got pleasant, as is already evident in the second portrait taken nearer the end of March.
For a warm-region plant, however, it does not like a drought. Before I figured out it needs perpetually damp soil, I would now & then see it at the height of summer wilted & laying its leaves down flat on the ground, looking for all the world to be expiring of heat prostration & already beyond salvation. But with a good watering, the leaves sprang right back up lively & bright. It was planted too near the house to get rained, so toward the end of summer I moved it to a damper location, where it quickly tripled its thickness & practically begged to have a little of itself harvested for salads.It produces two to three-foot stems for its loose star-shaped blossoms that begin pale green & turn reddish brown. The blooms are not as pretty as the blood-striped leaves, & if it is permitted to go to seed, the leaves will become rangy; eventually the entire plant will stop being a compact one-foot leafy clump, but grow tall & stringy. Yet by removing the June-July blooms, the plant does not grow tall & thin, but uses its energy to produce more & more of the basal leaves, keeping itself fresh & bushy. So I clip the flowers to keep it a tight leafy plant, though if I had two or three of them, I'd likely let one of them take its own course, as it easily self-propagates from its own seed.
If one can bare to pluck the youngest leaves, they are edible, taste like spinach or chard, &and add considerable color to a salad. It is worth growing a row of them in a vegetable garden as a food crop, though the leaves do quickly toughen.