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Sorrel and dock pollen

Sorrel and dock (Rumex acetosa, Rumex species) is airborne here from may to august, peaking June. Allergenic potency: moderate. No established food cross-reaction.

This is reference information, not a diagnosis and not a treatment plan. A pollen calendar cannot tell you what you are allergic to, and no page can clear a food as safe for you — only the label on the packet in your hand and the clinician who knows your history can do that. Anything beyond mild, short-lived symptoms in the mouth or nose — swelling that affects breathing or swallowing, hives away from the mouth, wheeze, vomiting or faintness — is an emergency question, not a reading question.

● peak weeks · ○ usually airborne. Typical mainland window from the national aerobiology monitoring programmes of the region · checked 2026-09-06

Where it grows here

Common sorrel is the red-brown haze over hay meadows and roadside verges in June, and broad-leaved dock is the coarse weed of farmyards, ditches and trampled ground everywhere in the region. Both are wind-pollinated, both are abundant, and neither is planted deliberately.

When it is in the air

Sorrel flowers from late May through the summer with the strongest counts in June, which places it precisely underneath the opening of the grass season. On the regional pollen calendars it is usually shown as a secondary line running alongside grass rather than as a season of its own.

What it feels like

Ordinary summer rhinitis, at the same time as grass and generally milder. Because it is hidden underneath the grass season, isolated sorrel allergy is rarely identified without a specific test.

What it cross-reacts with

There is no established sorrel food syndrome. Where sorrel shows up on a test it is frequently profilin, the plant pan-allergen, which cross-reacts across pollens and foods and produces positive results that often mean nothing clinically. Sorrel leaves are eaten in soups across this region, and that is unrelated to the pollen.

Related pollens: other members of the knotweed family, and many plants weakly through profilin.

Foods: no established cross-reaction. That is a useful negative — a food reaction in someone sensitised to sorrel and dock is not explained by the pollen and deserves its own assessment.

Named allergen molecules: Rum a-type pollen proteins; profilin is the main cross-reactive component. These are the official WHO/IUIS names, and they are what a component-resolved blood test reports.

What actually helps

Sorrel is not modelled in the CAMS forecast, so no live number exists for it. The practical proxy is the grass forecast, since the seasons run together and the avoidance measures — windows shut on dry windy afternoons, no drying laundry outdoors, a shower before bed — are identical.

What gets misread

A positive sorrel test is often over-interpreted. Profilin-driven positives are common, and a test result only becomes a diagnosis when it matches what actually happens to you in June.

Sources: Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex II · Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 828/2014 (gluten claims) · WHO/IUIS Allergen Nomenclature · season windows from the national aerobiology monitoring programmes of Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway · cross-reaction patterns paraphrased from the allergy literature and EAACI material · checked 2026-09-06

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