Cuckoo flower - May-June is the time to propagate - and Ragged Robin

[Amy]

From https://www.conservationhandbooks.com/w ... the%20leaf. Just found this and copied it below in full in case the page disappears. Scroll down for propagation method from leaves.

Cuckooflower Scientific name: Cardamine pratensis Family: Brassicaceae (formerly Cruciferae) (Cabbage)

Cuckooflower gets its name because it first appears in April, at the same time as cuckoo.

May and June are the months when cuckooflower is in full bloom and, for this reason, many people call it the Mayflower. It is also known as Lady’s Smock and Milkmaids.

These pretty, pinky-purple and white flowers are often found in wet meadows, stream margins, ditches and pastures where they often form a carpet of blossoms.

Cuckooflower is a native herbaceous perennial plant and although it is not protected or threatened, its range has been reduced due to the drainage of many of our wetlands.

The flowers occur in groups at the end of the flower stalk which droop and close up at night or during heavy rain. The flowers are hermaphrodite and are pollinated by bees, flies, moths and butterflies. It thrives in moist, slightly shady places on most soil types.

The leaves of the flowering plant are used to treat chronic skin complaints and asthma. 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.

Propagation
From seed
Sow seed outdoors in a seedbed in a shady position in April. Plant out in autumn or spring.

By division
As cuckooflower seed is very small and hard to collect, vegetative propagation may be more suitable.

Fill a seed tray with moist compost. Place cuckooflower leaves flat on the surface of the moist compost and ensure that the compost and leaf make good contact.

After three to four days small white roots will appear on the underside of the leaf. After two weeks the leaves have transformed into recognisable plants and should be transplanted into a pot to grow on.

After flowering the cuckooflower loses its leaves quickly so be quick when the plant is in flower (May and June). This also guarantees that you have collected the cuckooflower and not other members of the same family.

Alternatively, the plant produces young plants at the base of its leaflets, when large enough these can be easily separated from the main plant and grown on as individuals or simply divide in spring or autumn.

[Jane W]

Superb post thanks Amy. I will try this.
I have lost a lot of cuckoo flower from one meadow...anyone know what may have caused this? and when to scythe to preserve cuckoo flowers?

[Amy]

Thanks, Jane. I have seen a mention somewhere that leaves of the cuckoo flower will grow roots even just in water, so I am trying that. Scything - Perhaps if you mark a couple with a stick, you'll be able to monitor the growth and seeding. Without their flowers, they become seem to become invisible, don't they.

My plants seem to grow as isolated scattered individuals whereas I have rather enviously seen great clumps of them massed together elsewhere this year. I suppose it's propagation by seed rather than off shoots. Do you have both single and double? (My area does, mostly double, she says very proudly.) Do you think something might have grazed or pecked the flowers off so you can't easily see the plants, (deer? pheasants? rabbits?), or have you had a very late, very cold, very dry spring over there, like we have, and they just haven't flowered yet?

(There is a youtube video about orange tips laying their eggs just below the flower buds.

Have you read Dave Goulson's book about his property in France?)

[Jane W]

Yes, ours grow as isolated clumps... And I think are single flowers. I used to have a lot in one field and now only a couple of stragglers.
All your suggestions for culprits are possible...we have had long dry spells ...especially this spring...and very late frosts too (climate here is almost exactly like Devon...maybe tiny touch warmer..think Jersey). Deer abound, and could very well have nibbbled the flowers off...without which its pretty impossible to spot the plants you're right. Also orange tip butterflies have been increasing in number in the last couple of years. Columbo style I have noticed though that in some local fields they still have just as many this year, and so I'm wondering if I just haven't cut the grass and they've been swamped out by more vigorous summer growth. I find it really difficult to decide when to cut..first spring flowers then cuckoo flower, then orchids, then knapweed, then cow parsley, then lovely grasshoppers! Then seed heads for the birds. It never seems like a good time.
I may have to bite the bullet and do some summer scything this year.
I'm still on a learning curve here.
Luckily I planted one of these cuckoo flowers in the raised beds so your propagation tip may save them. If I can get them to root I can repopulate the field.
PS no I haven't read the book you mention, what's it called? Is it an interesting read?

[Robin]

We usually have a great display of cuckoo-flower, as we have a wet meadow. But last year, though there were plenty of leaves, there were very few flowers.
There were about a dozen pheasants around (our neighbour is the Clifford Estate). This year, hardly a pheasant in sight and a glorious abundance of cuckoo-flowers.
Circumstantial evidence? We'll have to interview some suspects and see if they have an alibi for last year.
But there could be a plot twist in which the deer are revealed as the culprits.
To be continued.....

[Tracey Hamston]

This is a great thread and I'm off to root leaves from my few plants to propagate some new additions to my lawn/ mini meadow
Thanks Amy for that original informative post

[Amy]

Thanks, everyone. The pathetic little cuckoo flower leaves which didn't look worth bothering with, are actually producing roots after a week sitting in plain water. Both stem and basal leaves are rooting from just near the end tips. Having seen this, another time I will place the leaves on damp mud with a bit of perlite in, to save damaging the roots when pricking out from water to soil. I'm rooting stem cuttings from ragged robin and loose strife in a pot of mud sitting in water, they drooped initially but have now perked up again.

(Jane - look up A Buzz in the Meadow by Prof Dave Goulson. I've read it and immediately wanted to up sticks to France. He has given a talk to MM. I've read A Garden Jungle and Sting in the Tail too. I heartily recommend the audiobooks, he has a very pleasant voice, and as the Jungle book can be quite intense, a friend called it 'heavy', it is very digestible on audio. The Sting in the Tail is very funny and excruciating in parts - nothing nasty, just descriptions of what he dissected as a little boy.)

[Jane W]

Yes the cuckoo flower leaves really do look uninspiring sitting on a bit of compost but I'm keeping fingers crossed for roots. Accidentally cut a stem off the other day, so that's sitting in water too.

I have one solitary Ragged Robin...in a damp and shady spot...does that sound like their preferred environment?
Any advice on propagation would be most useful....are you literally cutting stems and potting them into compost? All the stems seem to have flower heads at the moment...would I be better to let them go to seed and collect the seeds?

Amy...thanks for recommendation re Dave Goulson book I'll give it a go.

[Amy]

Jane - ragged robin - damp definitely, perhaps light is secondary if yours has put itself in the shade - mine grow in a peaty bog and on solid impermeable permanently damp clay out in the open. It does better in the bog.

Last spring I discovered large patches of what I was 99 and 3/4% convinced was loose strife, growing on a mown path through the bog. Whether the mowing shorter grass had helped it, by cutting off the stems so it spread sideways instead, or whether I just noticed it because of the short grass I am not sure, but think it was probably the former. I divided and transplanted it and it turned out to be ragged robin. Ragged robin, loosestrife and willow herb young stems look almost indistinguishable to me, similar leaves and purple flushed stems.

Ragged robin seed is found commercially for sale, so must be relatively easy to germinate and grow on. You could try seed and cuttings, and divide in future years when your one precious plant is a bit bigger, or you could sacrifice the seeds and keep cutting it to make it spread sideways?

I have rooted soft cuttings of marsh woundwort and loose strife in water and watery mud, so I think it will work for R Robin as long as the water is kept topped up. Watery mud is best. They always say cut off the flowers when you take cuttings, don't they, so it depends if you can bear to sacrifice some of the flowers this year.

Just found https://www.conservationhandbooks.com/w ... ged-robin/ from the same source = has tips on propagation of ragged robin. This site also has info on dog violet, ox eye daisy, marsh marigold, birds foot trefoil, yellow flag (personally I'd never voluntarily introduce yellow flag on a wet site - I've seen it Rampage in a garden pond, statuesque and dramatic, particularly in a raised pond, but the flowering period is very short, and naturalised, not native, but it will behave itself on damp soil, and the drier the soil, the less likely it is to flower, so you takes yer choice..)