Bridewort

Spiraea salicifolia, the willow spirea, bridewort or willow-leaved meadowsweet, is a deciduous suckering shrub in the Rosaceae family with a broad native range across east-central Europe, Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Russian Far East, Mongolia, northern China, Korea and Japan. Plants form dense colonies of slender, erect, reddish-brown stems 1 to 2 metres tall, with narrowly oblong to lanceolate, sharply serrated, willow-like green leaves arranged alternately. From midsummer to early autumn the stems are tipped with showy, dense, narrow pyramidal panicles 5 to 15 centimetres long composed of many tiny pale pink to rose-pink five-petalled flowers with prominent stamens, much visited by bees and other insects. Small dehiscent follicles follow. Long cultivated in Europe since the 1500s for hedges and ornament, the species has naturalised widely across the rest of Europe and eastern North America, where it colonises moist meadows, ditches and streamsides.