IJO 
CARDAMINE PRA.TENSIS. 
probably acquired its common English name of ladies-smock from 
the white appearance which its blossoms give to the meadows where 
it abounds, resembling linen bleaching on the grass :* a practice 
very general formerly, when most families spun and bleached their 
own linen : and that of cuckow flowers from their blowing early in the 
spring when the cuckow is first heard. This plant also gives name 
to one of our most beautiful species of butterfly, the Papilio Car- 
damine, or orange-tip butterfly of Linnaeus, the caterpillar of which 
feeds upon it. 
The root is perennial, branched, and sends off" many long, round 
fibres; the stalk rises about nine or ten inches high, upright, round, 
or very slightly angular, smooth, and a little branched towards the 
top ; the radical leaves are frequently imperfect or altogether want- 
ing; when present, spreading in a circular form, pinnated, the pinnae 
roundish, slightly and irregularly angular, and stand upon very short 
petioles ; the leaves upon the stem are erect, and consist of several 
pair of pinnae, with an odd one ; the pinnae are opposite, spear- 
shaped, concave, pointed, and of a bright green ; the flowers terminate 
the stem in a corymb ; the peduncles are smooth and round ; the calyx 
a periauthium, deciduous, composed of four leaves, which are oval, 
obtuse, membranous at the edge, hollow, and the alternate one gibbous 
at the base ; the corolla is cruciform ; the petals are inversely ovate, 
white, or very pale purple, veined, slightly emarginate, claws of a 
yellowish colour ; the filaments are six, four long and two short, 
bearing small, oblong, incumbent yellow anthers, and invested at 
their base with four nectarious glands ; the germen is round, slender, 
about the length of the filaments; style very short; stigma globular; 
seed vessel a cylindrical pod of two valves, about an inch in length, 
which opens elastically when the seeds are ripe, and rolls back in a 
spiral form ; the seeds are numerous, round, somewhat flat, and of 
a yellowish colour. 
We are told by Millerf that there are four varieties of this species 
of cardamine, viz. the single blossom, with white and purple flow- 
ers, and the double flower of both colours. These varieties are 
frequently intermixed in the same meadows. The leaves of this 
plant are gathered by the country people and e:aten as salad. 
* This resemblance is described bj our imraorlal bard Shakspeare, in Love's Labour 
Lost, 
t Vide Card. Diet. 
