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Name this plant - please.
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:21 pm
by Diane
http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i152/ ... lant-1.jpg
Hello all,
Can anyone put a name to this pretty plant, found growing in my daughters' garden in Scotland.
Many thanks.
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:30 pm
by oldherbaceous
Dear Diane, i'm pretty certain it's a Cuckoo flower, Cardamine pratensis.
And a lovely plant it is as well.
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:39 pm
by Diane
Very many thanks for the info. Much appreciated.
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:05 pm
by Monika
It is definitely the cuckoo flower, so called because it flowers when the cuckoo first arrives, it's also known as Lady's Smock and likes damp soil. Where it grows in large numbers (and it often does in damp meadows), you are likely to see the orange tip butterfly!
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:37 pm
by Gilly C
we used to call it Milkmaid as children in Yorkshire
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:51 pm
by oldherbaceous
I just love the many local names for our wild flowers.
Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:08 am
by alan refail
Just for the record, its Welsh name is
Llaeth y gaseg, which means Mare's milk.
The English names have some "rude" associations. My Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman's Flora suggests that "smock" was used coarsely in the 16th and 17th centuries in the same way as the mid-20th century expressions "skirt" or "a bit of skirt", and "smickering" was making amorous/leacherous looks (one country name for the flower is Smick-smocks). Unfortunatly, you just don't get the milkmaids these days to smicker at
