MEADOW RUE 67 



The surface is strewn with Duckweed as with confetti. Water 

 Plantain rises out ,of the water with its panicle of soft-tinted flowers. 

 The broad arrow of the waterway is marked by Arrowhead, and the tall, 

 graceful umbels of the Flowering Rush make the artist feign to use his 

 brush to catch their tints. Waving majestically in midstream, Bul- 

 rushes hide the nest of coot or water-hen. Down there in the wet 

 copse by the river bank is the Wood Clubrush half hidden by thickets 

 of reeds. 



Meadow Rue (Thalictrum flavum, L.) 



This species is found in the Cromer Forest Bed (Preglacial), in 

 Interglacial beds, as well as in Roman deposits at Silchester. At the 

 present day it is found in Arctic Europe, Northern Asia, that is to say, 

 the Arctic Cold Temperate Zone. In the Peninsula province it occurs 

 only in N. Somerset, and in Wales in Radnor, Pembroke, Cardigan, 

 Montgomery, Merioneth. In North England it is not found in 

 Cheviotland. It occurs in Scotland only in Kirkcudbright, Wigtown, 

 Lanark, Berwick, Edinburgh, Fife, Argyle, Dumbarton, Clyde Islands, 

 Caithness, and is rare, being local also in Ireland. 



Meadow Rue grows by the sides of rivers, streams, and lakes, and 

 is therefore a hygrophile and a plant of the lowlands. It is hardly a 

 marsh plant in the usual sense, though it needs moisture; but it grows 

 on banks where the soil is firm and never waterlogged. It grows 

 above the line of Bur-reed, Flag, and Iris, with which it is associated, 

 usually forming clumps, where the great Yellow Cress runs riot. 



It is an erect plant, branched, with furrowed stems, having much 

 the appearance of Clematis, but it is more compact in the distribution 

 of the leaves and branches. It has a tufted habit, and grows in clumps 

 of 2 or 3 ft. in area, in a more or less shrub-like manner. The leaves 

 have the leaflets arranged each side of a common stalk. 



Except Clematis this plant cannot be confused with any other 

 British plant, and it differs from the Traveller's Joy in having no 

 feathery appendage to its fruit, and in the absence of tendrils. The 

 flower, sulphur-yellow, is made up of numerous feathery stamens and 

 anthers. The leaves are smaller and closer. 



Meadow Rue is 4 ft. high, flowering from May to July or August, 

 and is a perennial, deciduous, herbaceous plant. 



No honey is produced by the flowers, but abundant pollen; but 

 though there are no petals and the sepals are very small, the stamens 

 are many and conspicuous, and the plant is visited by pollen-seeking 

 insects, Diptera (Syrphidae, Muscidae), Hymenoptera (Honey Bee). 



