Flying milkmaids? Surely not.
It can’t all be down to April Fool Day, but this the month that confusion reigns. Not so much in the bird world, although many different – and some rarely seen because they migrate under cover of darkness – species are returning to breed. But the world of plants is rife with confusion: umpteen country names for the same species, even from one village to the next, and even more associated folklore about their power to cure, kill, fertilise, predict, protect, or feed us.
This plant, an even earlier opener this year in response to our rapidly heating climate, is Cardamine pratensis and was snapped locally by Lou Carpenter. It’s regaled by an assortment of names depending on where the viewer hales from: Milkmaids, Lady’s Smock, Cuckoo Flower and no doubt many more.
According to the Kent Wildlife Trust: The common name 'Lady's-smock' arises from the cupped shape of the flowers. However, 'smock' was once a slang term for a woman and the name may have alluded to certain springtime activities in the meadows!
If this allusion to a widespread country pastime of yesteryear means what I think it does (do any lads and lasses – aka blokes and smocks, I suppose - frolic in meadows anymore?), then there is another etymological connection with Cuckoo Flower and cuckold.
Folklore has it that these flowers emerge as Cuckoos return to breed, traditionally on the 23rd of the month, St George’s Day as well as Shakespeare’s birthday. The cuckoo of course is well known for ‘cuckolding’ small birds when laying its own egg in their nest. Early scientists had many fanciful ideas (all of them wrong) about the cuckoo’s lifestyle, but no real understanding about its egg-laying. Not until, that is, 1788 when Edward Jenner (the country doctor famous for his work on inoculation against smallpox) published the first observed account of what we now know really does happen. Even back then it was poo-pooed by respectable scientists and wasn’t full accepted for a century or so.
Nowadays, of course, most people have watched it happening on TV to the hushed tones of a David Attenborough voiceover. So if you come across a ‘bloke and a smock’ in a Marden meadow, don’t disturb them. They’re probably watching it in real l