Cardamine pratensis

Cardamine pratensis, commonly called the cuckoo flower, lady's smock, mayflower or milkmaids, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae and order Brassicales, a perennial herb native to Eurasia. It is a hairless, herbaceous perennial growing to about 60 centimeters tall, with pinnate leaves 5 to 12 centimeters long made up of 3 to 15 leaflets each around 1 centimeter long, and flowers borne on a spike 10 to 30 centimeters long, each with four pale violet pink petals, occasionally white, and six stamens; its seed pods reach up to 5 centimeters in length. The species is widespread in Europe and commonly found throughout the British Isles, including every Irish vice-county, and grows best close to water, favoring moist ground. It has become naturalized in North America through cultivation, and serves as a food plant for the orange tip butterfly, Anthocharis cardamines. In folklore the plant carried fairy associations that made it considered unlucky indoors and excluded from May Day garlands. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/