Compendium

Lady's smock is a hairless perennial herb of the cabbage family, Brassicaceae, native to Eurasia, widespread in Europe and common across the British Isles, where it does best close to water. Grown in gardens, it has naturalised in North America, while in parts of Germany it is now under threat. It reaches about sixty centimetres, with a rosette of rounded leaves at the base, narrow leaves up the stem and loose clusters of four-petalled flowers, usually a pale pinkish mauve and occasionally white. Its species name means of the meadow, and the name cuckoo flower is put down to its blooming as the first cuckoos reach the British Isles each spring. Lady's smock is said to be a worn-down form of Our Lady's Smock, a plant dedicated to the Virgin because it was held to flower about Ladytide. The plant is edible, with a peppery taste like watercress; it was once reckoned a remedy for scurvy, and in the early nineteenth century it was an ordinary salad herb. It is the county flower of Cheshire and of Brecknockshire. In English folklore the flowers were sacred to the fairies, said to be little dresses they had sewn, so they were left out of May Day garlands and kept out of the house, lest a fairy come in with them; other tales held that witches used them in spells. In magic it serves love, fertility, healing and divination.