File:Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) - geograph.org.uk - 1143996.jpg

English: Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria). This is a native species, common in wet places. Its common name may have arisen, not through any association with meadows, but from its being used as a flavouring for mead. Other common plants in these wet grasslands include 1143992 and 1143994.

These meadowsweet plants occurred alongside a cycle route, and were often heavily galled; see: 928368.

[Meadowsweet pollen has occasionally been found in Bronze Age burial sites; this used to be interpreted as suggesting that, even then, the flower was used to flavour drinks. However, in 2009, archaeologists found remains of flower heads, probably of meadowsweet, in a Bronze Age grave at Forteviot (NO0517); if placing such flowers in the grave was a common practice, this may account for the pollen found with burials from this period.]

(Note that much of the pathside plant life shown in these articles will have been obliterated by engineering work, albeit badly needed, to resurface and widen the cycle route; this work was carried out between Oct 2008 and Jan 2009; see 1136064).