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.