Watercress

Rorippa nasturtium aquaticum Watercress is a lowland plant, common throughout Britain except in the Scottish Highlands and central Wales. It is found in streams, ditches and flushes with moving water. It can be gathered at almost any time, except when there is a frost, and it flowers from May to October.

There is documentary evidence that watercress was used as a medicinal plant from the 1st century AD (Dioscorides’s Materia Medica of about AD 77) to the 19th century. It was not cultivated until the 19th century. A common plant of British streams.