Cardamine pratensisL.

Cuckooflower

WFO wfo-0000587355 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cardamine pratensis, photographed by Zeke Marshall
fig. a Zeke Marshall, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203167496
Cardamine pratensis, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. b Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201719084
Cardamine pratensis, photographed by Anne Thomson
fig. c Anne Thomson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203682993
Cardamine pratensis, photographed by KAR
fig. d KAR, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201005222
Cardamine pratensis, photographed by Anne Thomson
fig. e Anne Thomson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202743374
Cardamine pratensis, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. f Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201308664
Cardamine pratensis, photographed by E. A.
fig. g E. A., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201020177
Cardamine pratensis, photographed by Lee
fig. h Lee, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201031044

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 4,572 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 4,572 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 40 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cardamine acaulis Berg
  • Cardamine buchtormensis Willd. ex DC.
  • Cardamine fontinalis Schur
  • Cardamine fossicola Godet
  • Cardamine fragilis Degl.
  • Cardamine grandiflora Hallier
  • Cardamine herbivaga Jord.
  • Cardamine integrifolia Gilib.
  • Cardamine latifolia Lej.
  • Cardamine laurentiana Andrz. ex Ledeb.
  • Cardamine monticola Timb.-Lagr.
  • Cardamine nasturtii Spreng.
  • Cardamine nasturtiifolia Steud.
  • Cardamine nasturtioides Schur
  • Cardamine nemorosa Lej.
  • Cardamine orophila Timb.-Lagr.
  • Cardamine pentaphylla R.Br.
  • Cardamine pratensis f. arctica O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine pratensis f. pratensis
  • Cardamine pratensis subsp. iliciana (Fritsch) O.E.Schulz
  • Cardamine pratensis subsp. major Tomšovic
  • Cardamine pratensis subsp. picra De Langhe & D'hose
  • Cardamine pratensis var. atlantica Emb. & Maire
  • Cardamine pratensis var. debilis DC.

and 16 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.