Old fashioned wild flower names

I was looking at wildflowers this morning, and remembered a long-running dispute between my mum and dad as to the correct name for a pink flower that we came across on a family walk. Dad said they were cuckoos and mum said they were pudding bags. This went on for years. Then I borrowed a flower book from the library and unhelpfully pointed out that they were, in fact, red campions. Not well received by either party! I can guess the origins of both of the names, cuckoos from when they appear in the spring, and pudding bags from the shape of the flower with that swelling below it, like a suet pudding. I’ve seen pudding bags mentioned online, but not cuckoos. Have you got a rare name for a wild flower?

 

They could have both been right (although I never heard of "pudding bags") - many plants have lots of different common names, often varying by area. My favourite is "Sticky Willy" for Galium aparine. Some other common names for it are cleavers and goose grass.

Edit: if you want to be really correct about it, red campion is Silene dioica. But even the botanical latin names change over time when the botanists find out more about plants and reclassify them.

 

Round my way those were called sticky buds

 

Round here, @Emerion, and also where we lived in central, rural Belgium, all the silenes are albas and look stunning against the spring green backdrop in the hedgerows and woodland glades along with bluebells now and cowslips before.

I've always known them as cockles.

 

Is Rose Campion also referred to as Scarlet Periwinkle?

 

Not by anyone who bothers to look them up.