Muskratweed

Thalictrum pubescens, the tall meadow-rue or king-of-the-meadow, is a stout perennial herb of the family Ranunculaceae growing 1-2.5 m tall from a stout fibrous-rooted crown, native to wet meadows, stream banks and damp thickets across eastern North America from Newfoundland and Quebec south to Georgia and Tennessee. The erect, leafy, often somewhat angular stems are smooth or slightly pubescent above and bear large alternate compound leaves that are ternately decompound, with the ultimate leaflets obovate to nearly round, 1-3 cm long, three-lobed at the rounded tip and conspicuously pubescent or glaucous beneath. The plant is functionally dioecious; in midsummer it bears large showy terminal pyramidal panicles 15-40 cm long of numerous small flowers. The flowers lack petals; staminate flowers have 4-5 small whitish sepals that fall early and a conspicuous puffball-like cluster of long white filaments tipped with pale yellow anthers, while pistillate flowers bear a head of green carpels with feathery white-pink stigmas. The fruit is a small dry, longitudinally ribbed, beaked achene 3-5 mm long borne in tight clusters. Its airy plume-like inflorescences make it a striking element of late summer wetland flora.