Cuckoo Flower
Cardamine pratensis
Full description
The Cuckoo Flower or Lady’s Smock is an elegant flower. The plant is 20-50cm in height with narrow long leaves and will produce 2 or 3 pink or white flowers on each stem in late spring/early summer.
It can be found in moist or wet habitats, including damp grasslands, roadsides, ditches and river banks. In garden situations the plant can play a role in spring flowering lawns on heavy soils, when a regular cutting programme is carried out after flowering. The Cuckoo Flower can be established in a range of wet grasslands, including sites waterlogged in the winter.
The maintenance regime can comprise a cut in June or July with a second cut in the autumn. The key issue is not to let the sward grow so tall as to swamp the Cuckoo Flower.
The flower is an important larval host plant and nectar source for the Orange-Tip and Green-Veined White butterflies.
