Germolene

Meadowsweet

In a 2009 blog post called Scratch and Sniff Botany the botanist Phil Gates writes about Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) and how when you crush the leaves they smell like germolene. This is what it looks like:

Meadowsweet

Meadowsweet has distinctive red stems and made a mental note to crush a few leaves the next time I came across some. I found some and it smelled nothing like germolene. Or so I thought. What I thought I’d found was baby meadowsweet, but clearly it’s something else entirely. Looking at it closely I can see it clearly looks nothing like meadowsweet. This is what I was crushing:

Not Meadowsweet

Apart from a passing resemblance they look nothing like each other. I’m not sure what it is but it might be the rather obviously named Silverweed (Potentilla anserina). I think I’ll just wait until the flowers come out.

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