Cardamine pratensis matthioli

Description

Cardamine pratensis, the cuckoo flower, lady's smock, mayflower, or milkmaids, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae. It is a perennial herb native throughout most of Europe and Western Asia. The specific name pratensis is Latin for "meadow". Cardamine pratensis is a herbaceous, hairless, perennial plant growing to 40–60 cm tall, with pinnate leaves 5–12 cm long with 3–15 leaflets, each leaflet about 1 cm long. The flowers are produced on a spike 10–30 cm long, each flower 1–2 cm in diameter with four very pale violet-pink (rarely white) petals. The style of the fruit is short or longish. It grows best close to water. Its common name cuckoo flower derives from the formation of the plant's flowers at around the same time as the arrival each spring of the first cuckoos in the British Isles. An alternative 16th century dated tale refers to 'cuckoo spit', which the plant is sometimes covered in. Which is due to a bug called the froghopper and not the cuckoo. Cardamine pratensis is a polyploid complex, with all ploidy levels from diploid to decaploid, and dodecaploid, known, as well as frequent aneuploids. It may be treated as a single species, or divided into Cardamine pratensis s.str. (diploid to heptaploid) and Cardamine palustris (syn. Cardamine pratensis subsp. paludosa (Knaf) Celak., Cardamine dentata Schult.) (octaploid to decaploid). The species is commonly found throughout the British Isles. Recorded in Ireland from all 40 of the "vice-counties" (a system adopted by Praeger in 1901).