CARDAMINE, a genus of plants belonging to the natural order Crucifera, the sub-order Siliquosa, and the tribe Arabidem. It has a compressed pod, flat nerveless valves, a capitate stigma, the seeds in a single row, with the funiculus simple and filifortu. The species, which are numerous, are usually smooth herbs, with stalked, entire, lobed, or plumb:11y cut leaves, and racemes of white or red flowers.
C. pratensis, Cuckoo-Fower, Bitter-Cress, Common Ladies' Smock, has pinnate leaves, the leaflets of the lower leaves roundish, slightly angled, those of the upper leaf linear-lanceolate, entire; the petals three times longer than the calyx, spreading; the stamens half the length of the petals; stem terete. This plant has large lilac-coloured flowers, and is exceedingly abundant in some parts of the country. it has a bitter taste, hence its name Bitter-Cress. It is generally in blossom when the cuckoo returns to this country, and at that period covers the fields as though linen was bleaching : these circumstances explain its other common English names. Till recently it retained a place in the London and Dublin Pharmacopoeias. At one time it had
the reputation of being a diuretic and antispasmodic, and a drachm of the flowers was administered as a dose in hysteria, chorea, epilepsy, and other nervous affections. It is a native of Europe, Asia, and America, and is abundant throughout Great Britain.
Babington describes four other species of Cardamine as natives of Great Britain, C. impatiens, a sylvatica, C. hirsuta, C. anzara : with the exception of the last they are common plants. C. bdlidifolia has been figured in the 'English Botany' as a British plant, but no station for it is known. The leaves of C. hirsuta, when ripe and laid upon the ground, put forth buds which produce a new plant. It is extensively propagated in this way in moist soils. It is said that other species have the same property. C. impatiens is so named from its pods when fully ripened expanding suddenly with force when touched, and throwing the seeds to a distance.
(Don, Gard. Diet.; London, Encyc. of Plants; Babington, Manual of British Botany.)