Meadowsweet

Filipendula ulmaria

Meadowsweet is a damp-ground perennial with frothy cream flowers and a powerful sweet-almond, haylike scent. It is European rather than Northeast-native, but is hardy enough to grow in the region and has escaped cultivation in parts of North America.¹

The older name “meadwort” is literal: the flowers were used in Anglo-Saxon England to scent mead. They also served as a strewing herb, scattered on floors for their lingering fragrance.²

Meadowsweet used to sit in the genus Spiraea. That old botanical name is part of the history behind the word “aspirin,” a connection that outlasted the plant’s taxonomic move into Filipendula.³

Despite its herbaceous form, meadowsweet belongs to the rose family. The loose flower clusters make the relationship easier to imagine than the leaves do.