Achillea

Later flowering, the feathery leaves

Modest among the petals of Spring

Are soon topped with white bunches, tinged

Perhaps with pink or purple

Gracing the green with a look of old lace.

Lore:
Yarrow is a plant reputed to have healing properties. Its generic name Achillea derives from Apuleius Platonius and from Dioscorides who both claimed that Achilles used it to heal wounds caused by iron weapons. Similarly the Anglo-Saxons (who gave it the name gearwe) recommended that it should be pounded with grease and applied to wounds whence it “purgeth and healeth” them(*).

In Scottish Gaelic folklore it was held to help young women maintain their beauty:

“I will pick the smooth yarrow that my figure may be more elegant…”

but also for protection:

“I shall wound every man, no man shall wound me”. (**)

Sources:
Geoffrey Grigson An Englishman’s Flora (1958)
(*) O Cockayne Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Old England (1864-1866)
(**) Kenneth Jackson (translator) A Celtic Miscellany (1951)

Lady's Smock

Cardamine pratensis (Lady's Smock) flowers

growing between the leaves of Tansy in my garden.

*

When daisies pied and violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then on every tree

Mocks married men, for thus sings he:

‘Cuckoo, cuckoo’ – O word of fear

Unpleasing to a married ear!

So wrote Shakespeare at the end of Love’s Labours Lost, in his verses for the Spring. I always associate Lady’s Smock with the month of May and this year seems especially to favour them as they are everywhere in abundance. Other common names for the plant are ‘Cuckoo Flower’, ‘May Blobs’ and ‘Milkmaids’. Shakespeare’s verse suggests associations with amorous activities as part of the May festivities and the Old English name ‘lustmoce’ may reflect this. Shakespeare obviously knew much lore about this plant and its associations, although the words of the verse seem to suggest a reading of Gerard’s Herball (published just a year before the play was written) which also describes them as white, the colour of the bleached smocks of milkmaids, while the flower itself is more often somewhere between pale lilac and pink in colour.

Here is another verse from the same period as Shakespeare from Irish, given by Kenneth Jackson:

Tender cress and cuckoo flower:

And curly-haired, fair-headed maids,

Sweet was the sound of their singing.

Sweet indeed are Lady-Smocks in May.