Cardamine hirsuta
species of plant
Cardamine hirsuta, commonly called hairy bittercress, popping cress, common bittercress, hoary bittercress, hairy wood-cress, small bittercress, pepperweed, shotweed, or snapweed, is an annual or biennial species of plant in the family Brassicaceae, and is edible as a salad green. It is common in moist areas around the world.
Description
Depending on the climate C. hirsuta may complete two generations in a year, one in the spring and one in the fall; also depending on the climate, the seeds may germinate in the fall and the plants may remain green throughout the winter before flowering in the spring. It often grows a rosette of leaves at the base of the stem, while there may be leaves on the upright stem, most of the leaves will be part of the basal rosette. The leaves in this rosette are pinnately divided into 8–15 leaflets which have short stems connecting them to the petiole. These basal leaves are often 3.5–15 cm (1.4–5.9 in) long. The leaflets are round to ovate in shape and may have smooth or dentate edges. The leaflet at the tip of the leaf (terminal leaflet) will be larger than the other leaflets and round to reniform in shape. The cauline (attached to the upright stem) leaves are also pinnately divided, with fewer leaflets, and generally smaller than the basal leaves; these leaves will be borne on a petiole and are 1.2–5.5 cm (0.5–2.2 in) long. The stems, petioles, and upper surfaces of the cauline leaves are sparsely hairy.
“Cardamine hirsuta” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cardamine, hirsuta and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Cardamine hirsuta” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cardamine, hirsuta and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q157926. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cardamine hirsuta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.