Meadowsweet
Filipendula ulmaria
The sweetness of it carried on water tells you where it grows.
Overview
Meadowsweet fills the air above summer rivers with something between almonds and honey and freshly cut hay. It grows in dense stands at the water's edge, tall and cream-flowered, and the scent of it carries far enough that you smell it before you see it. The Druids considered it one of the three most sacred herbs — alongside mistletoe and vervain — a designation that has been quoted often enough without any clear explanation of what they did with it. What is clearer is that meadowsweet is the plant from which aspirin's active compound was first isolated: salicylic acid, named in 1839 from the old genus name Spiraea, which gave aspirin its name. The herb that became synthetic medicine and then was forgotten by the medicine that descended from it.
Botanical Notes
A robust, rhizomatous perennial reaching 60–120cm with pinnate leaves of large, dark green, wrinkled leaflets alternating with smaller ones, white-felted beneath. Stems are reddish. Dense, frothy, flat-topped clusters of tiny cream-white flowers with a powerful, sweet almond-honey scent from June to September. Found in damp meadows, fens, riverbanks, and wet woodland throughout Europe and western Asia. Naturalised in North America. Salicylates occur in the flowers and leaves; tannins in the root.
Lore & History
Beyond the Druidic association, meadowsweet appears in Welsh mythology as one of the flowers used to create Blodeuwedd — the woman made of flowers by Math and Gwydion for Lleu — alongside oak blossom and broom. In the folk tradition of the British Isles it was strewn at weddings for its scent and at funerals for the same reason. Mead — the ancient honey-wine that gives meadow its name, or perhaps the reverse — was flavoured with meadowsweet, a practice that persisted into craft brewing and modern botanical spirits. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have favoured it as a strewing herb.
Warnings
Safe at normal culinary and herbal doses. The salicylates in meadowsweet mean those with aspirin sensitivity or salicylate intolerance should avoid it. Do not give to children or teenagers with viral infections — the same Reye's syndrome risk as aspirin applies to high doses of salicylate-containing herbs. Avoid if taking anticoagulants. Otherwise one of the most benign plants in this archive.