Meadowsweet ripe for picking and brewing

IF you are lamenting the fact that your homemade cordial stocks are running low and kicking yourself for not making the most of elderflower season, halt right now.

As always, mother nature is bountiful and lucky for us, another sublime wild flower called meadowsweet, (Filipendula ulmaria), is ripe for the picking and brewing. Meadowsweet is often described as one of the most summery of all our wild flora, and if you are unsure of your ability to identify this magical perennial plant, let your sight and nose be the ultimate guide.

Its frothy tufts of delicate, graceful, creamy-white flowers with their distinctive fragrance are in blossom from June to almost September, and its fernlike foliage, green on top and silvery underneath, grows from 2 – 4 feet (3 /4m — 1.2m) on a red angular stalk. It generally grows in damp meadows, in ditches and bogs and at the edges of ponds, roadsides, on riverbanks and in damp open woodland.