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Filipendula ulmaria (L.) Maxim., Meadowsweet

Account Summary

Native, common and abundant. Eurasian boreo-temperate, but widely naturalised, including in N America.

1881; Stewart, S.A.; Fermanagh.

Throughout the year.

Growth form and preferred habitats

The tall, leafy, wiry and furrowed flowering stems (up to 1.2 m in height) and the persistent nature of the inflorescence, even when it is long dead in spring, make this rhizomatous perennial easily recognisable in all seasons. Meadowsweet tolerates and grows in a huge range of constantly damp, but not waterlogged, moderately acid to surprisingly dry, calcareous grassland and wayside habitats. F. ulmaria is most conspicuous and abundant in periodically wet, moderately fertile, lakeshore and riverside marshes, fens and ditches, but it is also frequent in moist or wet openings in woods, hedgerow banks, damp meadows, calcareous upland grasslands and on the banks of streams and roadsides at all levels.

The short rhizome and shallow roots of the typical plant make F. ulmaria a good indicator of fluctuating water tables on banks, shores and hollows and it can develop dense, competitive, often dominant patches in such situations. However, it cannot cope with prolonged waterlogged conditions and it also avoids the nutrient starvation and toxicity associated with strongly acidic peat bog soils of pH around 4.5 or below (Grime et al. 1988). Meadowsweet tolerates some shade in woodland openings or margins and in hedgerows, but this greatly restricts its flowering and seed production.

Fermanagh occurrence

The wide ecological tolerances of Meadowsweet have enabled it to be the most frequently recorded plant in Fermanagh. The same ecological range and flexibility permits it to be common and widespread throughout the whole of B & I. In the survey area, F. ulmaria probably occurs in every tetrad except those entirely represented by the exposed, blanket bogland of the Cuilcagh Plateau or the open water of Lower Lough Erne. The Fermanagh Flora Database records Meadowsweet in 496 tetrads, 93.9% of those in the VC.

Flowering reproduction

Plants flower from June to August and the inflorescence, a loose, irregular panicle on an erect stem up to 120 cm tall, contains over 100 individual, bisexual flowers. The creamy-white, 5 mm diameter flowers give off a heavy, sickly, sweet scent. They contain no nectar but still attract short-tongued insects such as flies, which eat and transfer some of the abundant pollen. Unvisited flowers self-fertilise. Leaf hairs on the plant also give off a refreshing fruity scent if brushed or handled, due to the presence of oil of wintergreen (Genders 1971, pp. 86-7). The 6-10 carpels in each flower twist into a head of achenes during ripening and the seeds are probably released only slowly from the dead stem during the winter months. Each inflorescence produces a large number of dry seeds and after seed release, water transport is very likely significant since the achenes can float for up to three weeks (Ridley 1930, p. 208).

There are very different ideas regarding the ability of the seed to survive in the buried soil bank: of a total of 34 estimates included in the survey of NW European literature, 20 regarded F. ulmaria as transient, six considered it short-term persistent (ie 1-5 years) and eight studies were indeterminate (Thompson et al. 1997).

Vegetative reproduction

The limited, but significant, vegetative extension of the creeping rhizome eventually allows the formation of large clonal colonies that can dominate other plants even at relatively low stem density (Grime et al. 1988). This is surprising considering the above ground biomass in stands of F. ulmaria tends to be less than in other commonly occurring tall-herb, stand-forming communities (Al-Mufti et al. 1977). However, the long persistence of the relatively large pinnate leaves appears to enable Meadowsweet to shade out smaller, less competitive species, especially in the more nutrient impoverished clayey soil conditions of some of the damp and shaded habitats it frequents (Grime et al. 1988).

Ecological pressures

F. ulmaria is highly palatable and is quickly ousted by grazing, but it withstands mowing or trampling very much better. As Rackham (1986) pointed out, on seasonally flooded or otherwise wet ground, due to access problems with machinery, the farmer carries out grazing and mowing at different times of year to avoid soft mud. Furthermore, in terms of selection pressure on the plant species, browsing animals carefully select the plants they prefer to graze, whereas the scythe, or nowadays the mechanised blade, cuts everything!

British and Irish occurrence

F. ulmaria is common, widespread and locally abundant throughout the whole of these islands in suitable habitats up to an altitude of 880 m in the Scottish Highlands (D.J. McCosh, in: Preston et al. 2002).

Fossil record

There is a long and continuous fossil record of F. ulmaria pollen and fruits from the Cromerian onwards in B & I and it appears to be strongly persistent through both glacial and interglacial stages (Godwin 1975, pp. 182-6).

European and world occurrence

In a European context, F. ulmaria is a widespread and polymorphic species with sufficient variation to merit the description of three subspecies in Flora Europaea 2 (Tutin et al. 1968). The three forms are: the widespread subsp. ulmaria throughout the total range; subsp. picbaueri (Podp.) Smejkal which is shorter in stature, achenes pubescent, and occurs from E Austria and S Czechoslovakia to Bulgaria and SE Russia; and subsp. denudata (J. & C. Presl) Hayek, which has leaflets with a long, narrowly triangular apex and occurs in W, C & E Europe (Kurtto et al. 2004). The overall distribution of F. ulmaria is widespread throughout most of temperate Europe and SE Asia, the distribution thinning out both southwards in the Mediterranean basin (absent from all of the Mediterranean isles) and eastwards into Russia and C Siberia (Kurtto et al. 2004, Map 3283). It has been introduced into eastern N America, but is scattered and not very widespread there (Hultén & Fries 1986, Map 1048).

Threats

None.