158 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
In wet places, particularly by the sides of rivers or brooks in 
woods. Rather scarce, but generally distributed from Cornwall 
and Sussex to Moray and Dumbartonshire. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Spring. 
Rootstock slender, creeping, thinly clothed with root fibres, 
stoloniferous, passing insensibly into the solitary stem, which rises 
with a curve, and is from 1 to 2 feet high, erect or slightly zigzag, 
branched in the upper part in large examples. Leaves not collected 
into a rosette, but equally distributed over the stem. Leaflets 
= to 13 inch long, generally sessile; those of the upper leaves 
narrower than those of the lower, but not conspicuously so; the 
terminal ones a little larger than the lateral ones. Flowers about 
3 inch across, in a lax raceme, generally with secondary racemes 
below the terminal one, so that the inflorescence becomes some- 
times decidedly paniculate. Sepals oval, generally purplish. Petals 
narrowly obovate, white, sometimes tinged with purple. Anthers 
purple. Fruit pedicels $ to 2 inch long. Pod 1 or 14 inch long, 
slightly beaded, terminated by a long slender style with an incon- 
spicuous stigma. Whole plant lively green, shining, smooth, or 
slightly hairy. The edges of the leaflets are generally ciliated. 
Bitter Cress, or Ladies’ Smock. 
French, Cardamine Amére. German, Das Bittere Schaumkraut. 
This pretty plant, with its large white or cream-coloured flowers, decorates our 
meadows in the first months of summer. As its specific name indicates, it is bitter, but 
its bitterness is of an aromatic kind, such as recommends cresses to general use. Sheep 
crop it readily, but cows refuse to eat it. The beautiful orange-tip butterfly, Anthocharis 
Cardamines, the Wood Lady of London entomologists, lives in the larva state upon the 
Cardamine and some of the allied genera. 
SPECIES IIL—CARDAMINE PRATENSIS. in. 
Puate CIX.* 
Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ. et Helv. Vol. II. Zeér. Tab. XXVIII. Fig. 4308. 
Rootstock short, creeping. Leaves pinnate, with 9 to 25 
leaflets, which are roundish and angulated in the lower, but oblong 
or strap-shaped and mostly entire in the upper leaves. Petals 
spreading, broadly obovate, three times as long as the sepals, and 
more than twice as long as the stamens. Pod linear, terminated 
by a thickish style about equal in length to the breadth of the 
pod; stigma entire. 
* The Plate is E. B. 776, unaltered. 
