Pale lilac four-petalled flowers with dark veins in damp meadows, opening as the cuckoo returns and feeding orange-tip caterpillars
Cuckoo flower — lady's smock.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Cuckoo flower
Native · flowers in spring, about when the cuckoo returns · damp grassland, verges and stream banks
Cardamine pratensis — Brassicaceae
The cuckoo flower, or lady's smock, is a spring wildflower of damp meadows, ditches and verges, with pale lilac, dark-veined, four-petalled flowers held above finely divided leaves. It blooms around the time the cuckoo starts to call. It is a vital food plant for the caterpillars of the orange-tip butterfly and the county flower of Cheshire and Brecknockshire.
How to spot them
- ▸Pale lilac or pink flowers with four petals, usually veined in darker violet, sometimes pure white
- ▸Leaves are pinnate: the basal leaves have rounded leaflets, the stem leaves narrow ones
- ▸Damp ground: wet grassland, damp meadows, pond edges, stream banks, ditches and road verges
- ▸Young leaves taste peppery, like cress — it is a crucifer
- ▸Look-alike: white-flowered garlic mustard has heart-shaped toothed leaves and grows on shady hedge banks; herb robert has five pink petals
How to know it
The county flower of Cheshire, where it is traditionally called 'milkmaid', and of Brecknockshire
Cuckoo flower.
Richard Mabey found that the first full blooming of this plant is a remarkably accurate predictor of the first cuckoo call
Cuckoo flower — from Flora Britannica.
Its peppery young leaves can substitute for cress in sandwiches and salads
Cuckoo flower.
In Devon, double-flowered and 'hose-in-hose' forms of this damp-meadow crucifer are fairly common
Cuckoo flower.
Picking this pale lilac spring flower was once thought unlucky in parts of England, so it was little used in medicine
Cuckoo flower.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Brassicaceae (crucifers), scientific name Cardamine pratensis
- •Also called lady's smock (Our Lady's smock), milkmaids, fairy flower, May flower and coco plant, according to Plantlife
- •A larval food plant for the orange-tip and green-veined white butterflies
- •County flower of Cheshire and Brecknockshire (Sir Frycheiniog)
- •Richard Mabey, in Flora Britannica, shows first full flowering predicts the first cuckoo
- •Commonly found throughout the UK wherever ground is damp
- •Young leaves have a peppery taste and are a cress substitute
- •Not to be confused with red campion, which some country people also called cuckoo flower
Drill it — 6 cards
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Sources
- Plantlife — Cardamine pratensis / Cuckooflower