Meadowsweet
The creamy flower head of a damp-meadow perennial of northern Europe, infused across Russia and the Baltics and used to flavour mead and country beer long before that. It smells overwhelmingly of almond and the cup never tastes as sweet as the smell suggests.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Filipendula ulmaria
- Family
- Rosaceae
- Part used
- Flower, Aerial parts
- Origin
- Europe and western Asia — wet meadow, ditch and riverbank; naturalised in North America
- Drunk in
- Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Sweden, Britain
Character
Almond and hay on the nose, then a dry, tannic and slightly bitter cup that does not follow through on the sweetness. Material with a lot of green stem in it is noticeably more astringent.
Notes: almond, marzipan, hay, meadow
History
The English name comes from mead rather than from meadow: it was a flavouring for honey wine, and the Anglo-Saxon meodu-wyrt is a brewing word. The plant was described under Spiraea before it was moved to Filipendula, and the old genus name is where the word aspirin comes from — a fact about the history of a word, not a statement about the drink.
How it is drunk
In Russia, Belarus and the Baltics labaznik or tavolga is dried and infused, frequently blended with fireweed, and it belongs to the same domestic tradition of country teas that ivan chai does. In Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia it goes into cordials, meads and small beers far more often than into a teapot.
Production
Flower heads are cut at full bloom and dried fast in shade. The almond aroma is volatile and a hot or slow dry leaves hay behind; the leaf and stem are more astringent than the flower, so material cut high is better than material cut at the base.
Preparation
Infusion · Blended with tea
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 90–95 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
“Queen of the meadow” is also used in North America for Eutrochium purpureum, an unrelated composite. Dropwort (Filipendula vulgaris) is a dry-meadow relative that looks similar in leaf and is not the plant of the mead tradition.
Common mistakes
- A long steep, which brings the tannin forward and leaves nothing of the almond.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. 132 of the 204 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Meadowsweet is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.