What does corncockle mean?
Corncockle (Agrostemma githago) is a slender annual plant of the pink family that was once one of the most familiar weeds of European and North American grain fields. Growing up to about a metre tall, it bears striking five-petalled flowers in shades of purple-pink, which made it a favourite subject for poets and painters even as farmers cursed it among their crops. Every part of the plant, especially its seeds, is poisonous, and contaminated seed corn historically spread it wherever cereals were sown. Modern seed-cleaning practices and herbicides have rendered corncockle rare in the wild, so today it survives mainly through deliberate conservation planting in wildflower meadows and heritage gardens. The name combines 'corn', meaning grain, with 'cockle', an old term for a pernicious field weed. For botanists and gardeners alike, corncockle stands as a poignant emblem of agricultural change — a beautiful but toxic plant whose decline tracks the industrialisation of farming itself.
nounA tall annual plant (Agrostemma githago) of the pink family, formerly a common weed of cornfields, bearing showy purple-pink flowers; its seeds are poisonous.
- The plant Agrostemma githago, a poisonous annual weed of cereal crops with pink-purple flowers, now rare due to modern farming methods.
"The hedgerow bank was brightened by a few stray stalks of corncockle, now a rare sight in British farmland."
"Conservationists reintroduced corncockle to the wildflower meadow to restore a plant once ubiquitous in Britain's cornfields."
"She pressed a spray of corncockle between the pages of her botanical notebook."
Used both for multiple individual plants and collectively for drifts or patches of the plant.
"The meadow restoration scheme scattered seed so that corncockles would flower again beside the poppies."
Every part of this pretty cornfield flower is poisonous — yet Victorian farmers once harvested it unknowingly alongside their wheat, contaminating flour with its toxic seeds.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of corncockle
The word corncockle is formed from two English elements: 'corn', the long-standing English term for the principal cereal crop of a region, and 'cockle', an Old English word (coccel) denoting a troublesome weed growing among crops. The compound has been in use since at least the early modern period, when the plant was a notorious infestation of wheat fields. It is thus a native English formation rather than a borrowing, though it parallels similar vernacular names such as cornflower and corncrake, which likewise attach 'corn' to organisms associated with arable land.
Related word forms
How corncockle is actually used
Corncockle is chiefly used in botanical, gardening, and conservation contexts rather than everyday speech. It carries connotations of rural heritage and lost farmland flora, as herbicides have made it rare across much of Europe and North America.
Easily confused with corncockle
Cockle most commonly refers to an edible marine bivalve mollusc, whereas corncockle is a poisonous arable weed; 'cockle' alone can also mean any noxious weed of cornfields.
Cornflower is the blue-flowered annual weed Centaurea cyanus, while corncockle bears purple-pink flowers and belongs to an entirely different plant family.