What is the cuckoo flower used for?
Amongst other uses it has beneficial digestive and stimulant properties. The leaves of young shoots can be eaten raw or cooked and are rich in vitamins (particularly vitamin C) and minerals. The cuckooflower was at one time a popular spring salad plant and has a pungent cress-like flavour. The flowers are also edible. Medicinal Uses Cuckoo flower is seldom used in herbalism, though an infusion of the leaves has been used to treat indigestion and promote appetite[268]. The leaves and the flowering plant are antirheumatic, antiscorbutic, antispasmodic, carminative, digestive, diuretic, stimulant[9, 146, 172, 238, 240].
What is another name for the cuckoo flower?
There are a vast number of common names including Our Lady’s smock, milkmaids, fairy flower, May flower and coco plant. Common name Lady’s Smock, Cuckoo Flower, Meadowcress, Pigeon’s Eye, Lucy Locket, Mayflower, and Bittercress.Cuckooflower has a rosette of leaves at its base and an upright stem that bears the delicate, small, pale pink or mauve flowers. Each flower has four petals, although double-flowered varieties do appear.
Is the cuckoo flower edible?
Is cuckoo flower edible? Yes, the leaves, stems, flower buds and flowers are all edible. Use them as a salad addition or in sandwiches. Bearing in mind their wildlife importance, so only take a little leaving most leaves to ensure the plant builds up energy. Cuckoos are part of a structure that stabilises because of its connection to other animals around. Put another way. Ecosystems only function when they are full of all the right abundance and proportions of animals and birds.What do cuckoos eat? Cuckoos eat invertebrates, and hairy caterpillars are a particular favourite. They find their food in bushes and trees. They are diurnal, this means they are active during the day.Most cuckoos are insectivores, and in particular are specialised in eating larger insects and caterpillars, including noxious, hairy types avoided by other birds.The favoured foods of the Channel-billed Cuckoo are native figs and native fruits, though some seeds, insects and even baby birds are also taken. The birds take figs from the tree with their massive bills.
What is the plant called cuckoo?
Cardamine pratensis Often known as Ladys smock or common name Cuckoo Flower. Plant of damp meadows and stream banks. Lovely lilac/white flowers. Cardamine raphanifolia (Broad leaved cuckoo flower) grows and looks extremely like water cress and you can eat it in just the same way, but has the benefit of spikes of large lavender pink flowers in late spring/early summer.