Cuckoo Flower Cardamine Pratensis
Pratensis is a perennial to 40cm forming a basal rosette of pinnate leaves with rounded leaflets with erect leafy stems bearing short open racemes of 4 petalled pale pink or white flowers 1 5cm across in late spring.
Cuckoo flower cardamine pratensis. It is an important food plant for the caterpillars of the orange tip and the green veined white butterfly. The most widespread of these is ssp. Our minnesota cuckoo flower is somewhat similar to our native spring cress cardamine bulbosa that can also be found in heavily shaded wet woodlands where it to grows weak and spindly. Click below on a thumbnail map or name for subspecies profiles.
We hope that you have found this information helpful. These floure for the most part in aprill and may when the cuckow begins to sing her pleasant notes without stammering. Pratensis is near threatened. Pink cuckoo better cress grows abundantly in damp meadows and is often found in the partial shade at the edges of meadows.
The blooms appear in late spring to early summer just at the time as the first cuckoo starts to call. Paludosa which can be found in southern and central finland in waterside meadows which are prone to flooding and also in many other kinds of damp places. Herbalist john gerard 1545 1612 explained the common name this way. Cardamine pratensis is one of the most beautiful and one of the best loved of our wild flowers.
Cardamine pratensis is a herbaceous hairless perennial plant growing to. The pictures of cuckooflowers shown on this page were taken in wales uk in may and june. Native introduced native and introduced. Cuckoo flower is a perennial species and no fewer than three sub species can be found growing in finland.
Cardamine pratensis is the official county flower of the old county of brecknockshire currently within powys and of the county of cheshire. However both its round to kidney shaped basal leaves and upper stem leaves are simple not compound divided. It bears long narrow leaves and supremely elegant flowers two or three to each stem in white or with pink tomes. The plants database includes the following 2 subspecies of cardamine pratensis.
Cuckooflower cardamine pratensis often known as lady s smock the pretty lilac flowers open around the time the cuckoo starts to call.