THE MEADOW-SWEET— continued. 
Their leaves vary ; but have generally stipules united laterally (adnate) to their 
petioles. The flowers are white, cream-colour, or various shades of red, and are 
generally individually quite small, but are massed in varied terminal or axillary 
cymose clusters. The inferior, persistent calyx is generally five-cleft : the petals 
equal the calyx-lobes in number : the stamens range from twenty to sixty in 
number ; and the carpels are usually free, or nearly so, and two- to six-seeded. 
The name Spir^a^ the Greek cnreLpaCa, speiraia, dates from Theophrastus ; 
but its significance is uncertain. It may refer to the flexible branches, to the sprays 
of blossom twisted into garlands, or, more probably, to the follicles, which in the 
Meadow-sweet are each spirally twisted. Of our two indigenous British species, the 
Meadow-sweet bears the specific name Ulmaria^ which is employed by Dodoens, 
from the decided resemblance of its leaflets to the leaves of Elm (Ulmus), With a 
short rhizome, it sends up its erect, branched, and angular aerial stems to a height 
of two to four feet. The root-leaves are large and interruptedly pinnate^ having, that 
is, a few large serrate leaflets and small intermediate ones in pairs. The terminal 
segment is large and acutely palmately three- to five-lobed, and the whole leaf is 
usually white and downy on its under surface. 
The creamy-white blossoms are borne aloft in very characteristic complex 
cymes with long side branches ; and, though they yield no honey, attract many 
insects by their fragrance and abundant pollen. The carpels are from five to nine 
in number, smooth and twisted, and each contain two brown flattened seeds. The 
late Lord Avebury suggested that the twisted carpels might deceive birds by their 
resemblance to small caterpillars and thus be carried to some distance. 
As throughout the summer its foamy masses of fragrant blossom trace the 
winding line of the brook as it traverses the fields, or advance into the water of the 
reed-swamp with such companions as the Great Willow-herb {Epilobium hirsutum 
Linne), the Yellow Loosestrife {Lysimachia vulgaris Linne), and the Water-plantain, 
it seems well to deserve the old name Regina prati, which remains in Scotland and in 
the United States as Queen of the Meadow and under similar forms in most countries 
of modern Europe. As William Coles puts it in his “Adam in Eden ” (1657) : — 
“In what meadow so ever it grows, it is more perspicuous than any of the rest.” 
The appropriate name Meadow-sweet is used by Gerard, and is taken, like Brideworty 
to refer to the use of the plant for strewing the floor, though Dr. Prior considered 
it but a corruption of Meadwort, a name still employed in Scandinavia, which means 
that the scented blossoms were added as a flavouring to mead. 
