This is the flower of my home county: Cheshire. There is a reasonable amount of it to be found around here but it loves wet areas so as those have become scarcer, so has this Spring flowering plant. It is a still a very common plant around British Isles and Ireland but the place where I've seen in spectacular thousands is, surprisingly, on the motorway verges of the M74 leading to Glasgow City centre. It is also one of the food plants of the Orange Tip butterfly which flies in Spring, has one brood then waits for a year as a pupa to emerge the following Spring.

LHS: Congleton, Cheshire 12th May RHS Bishopthorpe Palace Grounds, York 27th April 2005

Added on 13th May 2005, updated 20th November 2008, updated 10th March 2010