Botanical name: Lychnis flos-cuculi
Folk names: crowflower, drunkards, shaggy Jacks, thunder flower

Type: Perennial

Wildlife: Nectar for bees, and butterflies including the Orange-tip butterfly. A food plant for campion and rivulet moth caterpillars which feed on the flower buds, like its relative red campion. Caterpillars are an important food source for birds, and hedgehogs if they can access your garden. Moths are vital food for bats.

Flowers: March to May

Decorative merit: Numerous, daintily frayed five-petalled flowers 40mm across on erect stems with sparse, rough, hairy leaves. Produces an abundance of tiny, dark seeds which rattle in small brown capsules until ripe then capsules open and they spread by wind.

Where: Part-shade or sun. Pond margins, bog gardens, moisture-retentive soil at the back of shady borders or on shrubbier edges. Mine have also grown well on my sunny allotment, growing tall alongside red and white campions.

Folklore: Flowers were used for garlands and crowns. Unmarried girls would pick and name buds after their admirers, and the bud named after the man to be married would open first. It was also believed storms would flower if the flowers were picked.

Carnation family relative of ragged robin and white campion.

Donate seeds to Exeter Seed Bank