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In Uganda, eastern DR Congo and Tanzania, the leaves of ''Cardamine trichocarpa'' are collected from the wild, wilted, chopped, boiled and eaten as a vegetable, alone with a staple food or in a mixture with beans or peas. They are also used as fodder for goats and rabbits. In Uganda this vegetable is considered useful to treat kwashiorkor. The crushed leaves are used as a dressing on wounds for 2–3 days to improve healing, and they also make a good herbal bath for babies.

Erect or ascending, annual herb up to 50 cm tall; stem unbranched or profusely branched from the base. Leaves alternate, in outline oblong, up to 15 cm long, imparipinnate with 3–11 leaflets, bearing rather stiff hairs; leaflets ovate, up to 5 cm long with stalks up to 1 cm long, lowest pairs smallest, apex acute, margin serrate to crenate. Inflorescence usually a terminal, densely flowered, stalked raceme up to 20 cm long in fruit. Flowers bisexual, regular, 4-merous, small, greenish, often cleistogamous; pedicel in fruit up to 7 mm long; sepals oblong, up to 2 mm long, with scattered hairs; petals white, shorter than sepals or absent; stamens 4; ovary superior, 2-celled, cylindrical, stigma sessile. Fruit a linear silique up to 2.5 cm × 1.5 mm, with scattered hairs. Seeds broadly oblong in outline, c. 1.5 mm × 1 mm, red-brown, minutely rugose.