In all moist meadows and swampy places, from April to June, the eye is pleased with a multitude of waving flowers which in the aggregate look white, but at close quarters are seen to be a pale pink or lilac. They are Shakespeare’s “Lady’s smocks all silver-white,” that “paint the meadows with delight.” It is our first example of the Cruciferous plants, the four petals of whose flowers are arranged in the form of a Maltese cross. Its leaves are cut up into a variable number of leaflets; those from the roots having the leaflets more or less rounded, those from the stem narrower. The radical leaves as they lie on the wet ground root at every leaflet, and develop a tiny plant from each. The flowers are nearly ¾ of an inch across.

There are three other native species:—

Hairy Bitter Cress (C. hirsuta), with white flowers, ?th of an inch in diameter; anthers yellow.

Large-flowered Bitter Cress (C. amara), with creamy white flowers ½ inch in diameter; anthers purple. Riversides: rare.

Narrow-leaved Bitter-Cress (C. impatiens), white flowers, ¼ inch across; anthers yellow. Shady copses, local.

Name from the Greek Kardamon, a kind of watercress.