1. When I was a child in the 1950s, my grandmother who lived in a farmhouse at Mosterton, on the Dorset/Somerset border, grew pink sorrel in her garden, and we all knew it as shamrock [Tooting, London, January 2013].

2. Our dear neighbour is 89 … she is a real country woman .. as a child she ate leaves, called bread-and-cheese, or vinegar … from a plant with pink flowers [Milborne Port, Somerset, September 2011].

3. [I’m now in my 60s, as children my older brother and myself would] eat the stem of the pink shamrock flower. It tasted a bit sour, but was alright – when we lived at the farm we had several plants outside the front door [Leiston, Suffolk, July 2011].

Images: naturalized, Tintagel, Cornwall, March 2014; inset, Bexleyheath Cemetery,  London Borough of Bexley, August 2015.