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May Day's milk maid


Here is one of my favourite flowers from my childhood.  I have always called it milk maid, but it has various names, depending on where you grew up in the UK.  Some know it as cuckooflower.  That would be appropriate here because I could hear the cuckoo calling, some way off, as I was taking these photos.  However, I think this dainty little lady is best known as lady's smock, Cardamine pratensis.

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  1. Rambler2 May 2017 at 13:59

    Yes, I too remember this flower from my childhood in Leicestershire. There was a brook running through our little village and the fields on either side used to be absolutely full of these pretty flowers (I called them 'Ladysmocks', so almost the correct name). Now I see them in clumps and swathes along the edges of fields here in Cornwall and it takes me right back to when I used to walk home from school past those pale lilac/blue fields.

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