#cuckooflower

[dansnaturepictures]

15th April 2024: Bright green leaves and a carpet of dandelions out the front, Canada Goose and bluebells on my lunch time walk at Lakeside, camellia in the garden and view and Great Crested Grebe chicks at Lakeside.

A beautiful softly singing Blackcap in vegetation and Speckled Wood towards the end of the walk, Lesser Black-backed Gull with their sunshine yellow legs glowing in the sun, Blackbird and Starling at Lakeside and home, Robin, House Sparrow at home, cuckooflower, cuckoo-pint and garlic mustard were other key species today.

[kristo-flowers]

Bird cherry, celandine, cuckooflower, hawthorn

[heather-rajendran]

Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) wildflower photo I took 04/05/2024, Wintersett, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK

[anenglishwoodcomstuff]

Cuckooflower #wildflower

Cardamine pratensis. Picture taken April 5. #wildflowers #plants #nature #naturephotography #woods #plant #cuckooflower

[haikuckuck]

Wiesenschaumkraut Blüten

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word List: Flower

beautiful words with "flower" to plant in your next poem/story

Blanketflower - gaillardia—i.e., any of a genus (Gaillardia) of American composite herbs with showy flower heads

Cuckooflower - a bitter cress (Cardamine pratensis) of Eurasia and North America; ragged robin (i.e., a perennial herb, Lychnis flos-cuculi, of the pink family cultivated for its pink flowers with narrow-lobed petals)

Dayflower - any of a genus (Commelina) of herbs of the spiderwort family having one petal smaller than the other two

Flowerage - a flowering process, state, or condition

Floweriness - of, relating to, or resembling flowers; marked by or given to rhetorical elegance

Foamflower - a spring-flowering herb (Tiarella cordifolia) of eastern North America that has white flowers with long stamens and no stem leaves; also called: false miterwort

Gillyflower - carnation (i.e., a plant of any of numerous often cultivated and usually double-flowered varieties or subspecies of an Old World pink, Dianthus caryophyllus, found in many color variations; also: a moderate red; archaic: the variable color of human flesh)

Globeflower - any of a genus (Trollius) of plants of the buttercup family usually with globose yellow or orange flowers

Nonflowering - producing no flowers; specifically: lacking a flowering stage in the life cycle

Pasqueflower - any of several anemones with palmately compound leaves and large usually white or purple early spring flowers

Passionflower - any of a genus (Passiflora) of chiefly tropical woody tendriled climbing vines or erect herbs with usually showy flowers and pulpy often edible berries

Satinflower - honesty; blue-eyed grass; common chickweed; flannelflower; a plant or flower of the genus Godetia

Strawflower - any of several plants having everlasting flowers

Twinflower - a prostrate subshrub (Linnaea borealis) of the honeysuckle family that is found in cool regions of the northern hemisphere and has fragrant usually pink flowers

Waxflower - a climbing plant (Stephanotis floribunda) of Madagascar often cultivated in the greenhouse for its fragrant white flowers; an epiphytic tree (Clusia insignis) of British Guiana; indian pipe; spotted wintergreen

If any of these words make their way into your next poem/story, please tag me, or leave a link in the replies. I would love to read them!

More: Word Lists

[lovelylexis]

Piggesnye

a "cuckooflower"; someone who is pretty but not particularly bright

[unbelievable-ecological-articles]

GARLIC MUSTARD, MARCH

While walking down the River Yare with the dog recently I came across a flower I couldn’t recognise, growing in the middle of what I thought were maybe nettles or other weeds. Below is where I found them (excuse the photoshop skills):

There aren’t many British flowers with four white petals I could think of, other than bittercress and cuckooflower. So I took a couple photos with the seek app and it told me I’d found a garlic mustard plant (Alliaria petiolata) or, in British folk literature, a jack-by-the-hedge. After verifying it was indeed this by using the Wild Flower Guide, I started to read up on it. Here’s the photos I took, and the handy picture from the guide:

The guide told me the precise description of the different plant parts, as well as other information such as ‘roots and leaves smelling of garlic when crushed’ as well the habitats it prefers which are wood margins, hedgerows, roadsides, shady places, gardens and on fertile soils. It also gives the regions of Britain it is most common (throughout all of Great Britain) and when the plant flowers (April to June).

I furthered my reading on the internet, using first wikipedia as a starting point to find useful links, and when I had deemed these credible sources, including my information here. I find that’s the best way to use Wikipedia, not as a reliable source always but as a place to branch off from to find potential information. What I learnt was that garlic mustard is edible! It’s one of the oldest spices used in Europe, used for flavouring salted fish, made into a sauce for roast lamb, or on a salad. Today the garlic mustard plant is still used in cooking; the chopped leaves are made into pesto or put into salad, and the flowers and seeds are used to season and garnish. 

Before you start picking this plant (responsibly) and throwing it into the blender, one very important fact to know is: during its first year of growth, the plant can contain up to 100ppm of cyanide - a toxic level for vertebrates! However, once the plant is chopped up, the cyanide gas is safely eliminated.

Like all plants and animals, in their natural habitat they are usually part of a very old and established ecosystem, and their is a balance. Every species usually has its own niche and in this way the ecosystem thrives. When a new species is introduced, either accidentally or intentionally, to a completely different environment it can wreak havoc on the ecosystem, competing with the natural species and causing them to decline in number, or even killing them off completely.

Garlic mustard is a native species to many countries in different continents across the globe: Europe, western and central Asia, north-western Africa, Morocco, Iberia and the British Isles, north to northern Scandinavia, east to northern Pakistan and Xinjiang, China. Yet, in North America, it is classified as an invasive species. As it spread across the country it has caused a knock on effect on populations of other species. One example is how to toxicity of the plant is affecting the populations of certain rare butterfly species (such as the ironically named mustard white (Pieris oleracea)) that lay their eggs on the plant, not knowing how toxic the plant is to the caterpillars that will hatch. I found two useful food webs that illustrates how in its non-native environment it has no predators and therefore has the capacity to grow and spread unchecked, potentially displacing other important species, whilst in its native environment it plays a role in the food web, and therefore in the biodiversity. These images, seen below, were obtained from a great website dedicated to geoecology, http://ohiogeologyandbiodiversity.blogspot.com/ :

NON-NATIVE WEB:

NATIVE WEB:

[ofmushroomsandmoss]

Today's wildflowers: stork's bill and cuckooflower

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Thursday 8 July 2021

A perennial plant found in damp locations Lychnis flos-cuculi (ragged-robin, crow flower, crow soap, cuckoo flower, marsh gilliflower, meadow lychnis, meadow pink, wild William) is typical of damp meadows, woodland edges, marshes and ditches. The flowers of this plant seem to make it a particularly glamorous wildflower.

Jill Raggett

[dansnaturepictures]

16th May 2023-Lakeside and home 

Pictures taken in this set are of: 1. Pretty flowers I believe blue flax in the flower bed area on the way to Lakeside at lunch time. 2 and 6. Beautiful views at Lakeside at lunch time and this evening on lovely walks. 3. A stunning Whitethroat which sang stupendously atop a greening alder by the lake seen from the northern path. I’m having probably my best spring for them here having seen them many times, still a pretty notable bird for here for me and it was nice to get a record shot of one to mark this. 4. Cattle at Lakeside tonight. 5. Moorhen at Lakeside. 7. Mallard ducklings which I enjoyed lovely intimate views of tonight. 8. Tree out the back. 9. The shining buddleia bush looking nice out the front. 10. A nice flower at Lakeside at lunch time I believe spotted medick.

I was gripped to see a pair of Red Kites in the air on the way to Lakeside in the area out the front which was quite notable and from Lakeside along the northern path later on in my lunch time walk, glorious raptors to see in a mostly blue sky these were such precious views. A nice view of a Jay at lunch time and the Great Crested Grebes tonight were other of my favourite birds seen well today and I enjoyed watching a Kestrel that appeared to have prey in its talons tonight. Swift, Black-headed Gull, Herring Gull possibly mobbing the Red Kites, Jackdaws seen well, Wren and Robin were other Lakeside bird highlights with great views of Holly Blue, Small Heath, Speckled Wood and Green-veined White again in the way of butterflies. It was a delight to see some Bishop’s Mitre shieldbugs mating in the grass of the eastern meadow not something I’d seen before as well as little beetle and micro moths. Buttercups, oxeye daisy, vetch, mouse-ear chickweed, cuckooflower hanging on, yellow iris, sorrel, red deadnettle, cow parsley, and my first wood avens at Lakeside this year and first dog rose of the year were other flower highlights with poppy, forget-me-not and cornflower seen well at the flower bed on the way. I saw Woodpigeon, Collared Dove, Goldfinch and House Sparrow well from home again.

[heather-rajendran]

Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) wildflower photo I took on Saturday

[anenglishwoodcomstuff]

Cuckooflower or Lady's Smock #wildflower

Plenty of Cardamine pratensis in the wood, also Brimstone, Orange Tip and Red Admiral butterflies. Picture taken April 16. #wildflowers #plants #nature #naturephotography #woods #plant #cuckooflower #ladyssmock

[haikuckuck]

First cuckooflowers blooming seen on March 26

[dreamberry]

[cunabula27]

Have been holding onto this one, another cuckoo flower that caught the morning light beautifully on Thursday. I've not been able to go out for a few days as the weather's been pants, I hate missing time out in the woods especially with how quickly it changes this time of year. There's just been a massive downpour and now it's sunny so I think I'm going to sneak out for a bit. ______ #today #todayis #diary #calendar #photooftheday #lockdownproject #nature #naturephotography #woodland #woodlandphotography #flower #flowerphotography #cuckooflower #bittercress #cardaminepratensis #goldenhour #goldenhourphotography #spring #surrey #uk #panasonic #lumixg9 #lumixuk https://www.instagram.com/p/CO5pc-pnfkm/?igshid=175aaxhs6v57y