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There is in many places a curious antipathy to uprooting the house-leek, some persons even disliking to let it blossom, and a similar prejudice seems to have existed against the cuckoo-flower, for, if found accidentally inverted in a May garland, it was at once destroyed.
If it be spring, the children would delight in gathering the sweet-scented meadow flowers the water ranunculus, with its golden cups, the modest daisy, the pink cuckoo-flower, and the yellow cowslips; while overhead the bees kept up a constant humming; they have found their way from the straw hives in the garden and are diving into the delicious blossoms of the apple and cherry trees, robbing many a one of its sweets.
Our authority for the above details the Dictionary of English Plant-names, by James Britten and Robert Holland tells us that Orchis mascula, the 'male orchis', is also called Cowslip, Crowsfoot, Ragwort, and Cuckoo-flower. This plant, however, seems to have suggested to the rustic mind the most varied fancies, similitudes of all kinds from 'Aaron's beard' to 'kettle-pad'.
For this is a safer time of year than the flourish of the spring-tide, when the impulse of young warmth awaking was suddenly smitten by the bleak east wind, and cowslip and cuckoo-flower and speedwell got their bright lips browned with cold.
It is here that the Cull, which has run for miles under willow and alder, through deep pastures golden with marsh marigolds or scented with meadow-sweet, past cuckoo-flower and pitcher-plant and iris and nodding bulrush, forsakes better traditions, and becomes a common town-sluice before it deepens at the wharves, and meets the sandy churn of the tideway.
"What are these things?" holding up a few cuckoo-flowers that were half hidden like delicate shadows among the primroses. "You certainly show your liking by your knowledge. I thought every schoolboy knew the cuckoo-flower!" cried Adelaide, trying to seem natural and not bitter in her banter, and not succeeding. "I can learn. Never too late to mend, you know.
The young alders and the hawthorn hedges are greening, but it will be a fortnight before we can realise the beauty of that snow-white bloom, with its bitter-sweet fragrance. The cuckoo-flower came this year before instead of after the bird, they tell us, showing that even Nature, in these days of anarchy and misrule, is capable of taking liberties with her own laws.
Numerous flowers have been identified with her dress, such as the marigold, termed by Shakespeare "Mary-bud," which she wore in her bosom. The cuckoo-flower of our meadows is "Our Lady's smock," which Shakespeare refers to in those charming lines in "Love's Labour's Lost," where:
Birds, again, like animals, have suggested various names, and among some of the best-known ones may be mentioned the goose-foot, goose-grass, goose-tongue. Shakespeare speaks of cuckoo-buds, and there is cuckoo's-head, cuckoo-flower, and cuckoo-fruit, besides the stork's-bill and crane's-bill.
One which was marshy was white for weeks together with the lady's-smock or cuckoo-flower. The petals of these flowers are silvery white in some places, in others tinted with lilac. The hues of wild flowers vary with their situation: in shady woodlands the toadflax or butter-and-eggs is often pale a sulphur colour; upon the Downs it is a deep and beautiful yellow.
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