Skip to content

Your account

With an account, your progress (modules read, XP, badges, cards, notebook, pack, challenges) follows you on every device. Without one, it stays in this browser.

or
Harmless🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🌸 Cuckooflower (lady's smock)

Cardamine pratensis · Brassicaceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🏔️ Mountains
🧠 To remember it"Cuckooflower: the cress that doesn't get its feet wet" — same pungent taste as watercress, but without the liver fluke risk, since it grows in grass and not in running water.
Cuckooflower (lady's smock) — Cardamine pratensis

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

One of the first spring flowers in wet meadows, recognizable by its large pale mauve flowers with four cross-shaped petals (Brassicaceae) carried in loose clusters. Also called cuckooflower, it has the pungent mustard taste of true cresses, but grows out of the water, right in the grass.

  1. pale mauve (sometimes white) flowers with 4 cross-shaped petals, in a loose terminal cluster
  2. pinnately compound leaves, rounded leaflets at the base of the stem, narrower higher up
  3. hollow, hairless, erect stem
  4. grows in dense clumps in wet meadows and ditches, never in fast-flowing water
  5. pungent-peppery taste when a leaf is crushed, like a mild mustard
Size15-50 cm
FloweringApril-June
Habitatwet meadows, ditches, stream banks, tall-herb communities

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Watercress (aquatic, real risk of liver fluke) (Nasturtium officinale)cuckooflower grows out of the water and does not expose you to the risk of liver fluke, unlike watercress which grows in running water and must be cooked

To tell them apart: cuckooflower has clearly visible mauve flowers and grows in wet grass, never submerged; watercress has creeping stems floating directly in the current

🍽️ Eating it

Partsleaves, flowers
SeasonMarch-June
Tasteslightly pungent, close to cress or mild wild rocket

Preparation : raw leaves and flowers in salads, mild cress flavour; do not cook for long as it softens quickly

💊 Healing with it

traditionnellement citée comme antiscorbutique (riche en vitamine C comme les autres Brassicacées) et dépurative de printemps

Level of evidence : traditional use — compilations ethnobotaniques (PFAF)

⚠️ no major known contraindications at culinary doses

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • preferred host plant for the caterpillar of the orange-tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines), whose larvae feed almost exclusively on this plant and garlic mustard
Sources (2)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.