Purple oxalis is a huge hit with visitors to my workplace where I keep a pot going. Many people have never seen it, nurseries don't carry it often, I suppose it would not travel well with the soft stems. But it is a pretty easy plant. It needs decent bright light to bloom. I have it planted as understory in some of my big potted tropicals where it can become pretty thick. So sometimes I unpot the big plant so I can harvest some bulbs of Oxalis. The bulbs look like odd pink scaly things, and during active growth they also have an appendage like a tiny pinkish carrot. Plant the bulbs pretty thick to fill a pot. I think warmth may help the bulbs sprout quickly, they have been slow going sometimes when I started them in midwinter hoping for St Patrick's Day plants.

Reply to this comment

I've had a Purple Shamrock plant for years and I don't even remember when or where I got it. It ended up in the soil beneath another plant on my deck and I love the pretty rosy-pink blooms. The plant naturally goes dormant at certain times but always returns to bloom again. Someone once told me that this plant prefers daytime temperatures of 75ºF or lower, but my plant lives outside year round and seems to do fine in our 90º summer temperatures.

Reply to this comment

Country of origin is South America.

Zone 9 and up if growing outdoors.

At the end of the growing season, when your plants go dormant, you can dig up the bulbs and store them in dry sand or soil. Keep them in a cool, dark place until next season. You can also grow them year round indoors. When you want to replant, simply let the plants go dormant, dig up the bulbs, and replant them in fresh soil.

This plant has a triangular shaped leaf - each leaf is made up of two right triangles. This is different from some other Oxalis species that have circular leaves. The point where the three leaves meet has tiny hairs sticking out and a "hinge" where the leaves pivot their movement.

Reply to this comment