Meadowsweet

Meadowsweet possesses a pleasant taste and flavour, the green parts having a similar aromatic character to the flowers, leading to the use of the plant to strew on floors to give the rooms a pleasant aroma, and its use to flavour wine, beer and many vinegars.

The flowers can be added to stewed fruit and jams, giving them a subtle almond flavor. It has many medicinal properties. The whole plant is a traditional remedy for an acidic stomach and the fresh root is often used in homeopathic preparations. It is effective on its own the treatment of diarrhoea. The flowers, when made into a tea, are a comfort to flu sufferers. Dried, the flowers make lovely pot pourri. Active ingredients: compounds of salicylic acid, flavone-glycosides, essential oils and tannins.

In 1897 Felix Hoffmann created a synthetically altered version of salicin, derived from the species, which caused less digestive upset than pure salicylic acid. The new drug, formally Acetylsalicylic acid, was named aspirin by Hoffman's employer Bayer AG after the old botannical name for meadowsweet, Spirea ulmaria. This gave rise to the hugely important class of drugs known as NonSteroidal AntiInflammatory Drugs, or NSAIDs. This plant contains the chemicals used to make Aspirin, a small section of root, when peeled and crushed smells like Germaline, and when chewed is a good natural remedy for relieving headaches. (Filipendula ulmaria) is a perennial herb in the family Rosaceae, which grows in damp meadows.

It is native throughout most of Europe and western Asia though it has been successfully introduced and naturalized in North America. Meadowsweet has also been referred to as Queen of the Meadow, Pride of the Meadow, Meadow-Wort and Bridewort.