Meadowsweet

Another plant that is flowering around here at the end of August is meadowsweet . The blooms are pinkish-white and not too spectacular until you look very closely and observe the white petals, light pink stamens and deep pink and green centres. These are very common and normally I let them grow wild, but weed them from my flower and vegetable gardens.

Meadowsweet has many medicinal uses, in fact it was the main ingredient in the first forms of aspirin. Some native Americans used to make a herbal tea from this plant, which some web sites call an herb. I think the species growing around here is Spiraea latifolia which has less of the salicylic acid, one of its main medicinal compounds. If anyone on this list knows more about the medical uses of this particular variety of meadowsweet, please let me know.

I started using extension tubes, which I use to make macro images, but with a slight breeze moving the plants, it was near impossible to capture a view that was in focus. Instead, I used my 28-80 mm zoom lens to get as close as possible, then cropped them to show you the very close views.