Filipendula ulmaria

Filipendula ulmaria, commonly known as meadowsweet or mead wort, is a perennial herb in the family Rosaceae that grows in damp meadows. It is native throughout most of Europe and Western Asia (Near east and Middle east). It has been introduced and naturalised in North America. Meadowsweet has also been referred to as queen of the meadow, pride of the meadow, meadow-wort, meadow queen, lady of the meadow, dollof, meadsweet, and bridewort. The stems are 1–2 m (3.3–6.6 ft) tall, erect and furrowed, reddish to sometimes purple. The leaves are dark-green on the upper side and whitish and downy underneath, much divided, interruptedly pinnate, having a few large serrate leaflets and small intermediate ones. Terminal leaflets are large, 4–8 cm long, and three- to five-lobed. Meadowsweet has delicate, graceful, creamy-white flowers clustered close together in irregularly-branched cymes, having a very strong, sweet smell. They flower from early summer to early autumn and are visited by various types of insects, in particular Musca flies. The flowers are small and numerous, they show 5 sepals and 5 petals with 7 to 20 stamens. Meadowsweet leaves are commonly galled by the bright orange-rust fungus Triphragmium ulmariae, which creates swellings and distortions on the stalk and/or midrib. Meadowsweet is known by many other names. In Chaucer's The Knight's Tale it is known as meadwort and was one of the ingredients in a drink called 'save'. It was also known as bridewort, because it was strewn in churches for festivals and weddings, and often made into bridal garlands. In Europe, it took its name 'queen of the meadow' for the way it can dominate a low-lying, damp meadow. The name ulmaria means 'elmlike', possibly in reference to its individual leaves which resemble those of the elm (Ulmus). Like slippery elm bark, the plant contains salicylic acid, which has long been used as a painkiller. However, the generic name, Filipendula, comes from filum, meaning 'thread' and pendulus, meaning 'hanging'. This is said to describe the root tubers that hang characteristically on the genus, on fibrous roots.