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MEADOW RUE

A airy, pleasant-leaved mist of flowers suggests a delicate plant but instead meadow rue is a hardy perennial for your northern garden.

Genus: Thalictrum < thaliktron Greek name for a plant like Meadow Rue, but note how the Greeks thought this delightful genus a cheerful, happy plant, not at all rueful. The generic is related to Θάλεια thaleia Greek ‘abundance, good cheer, blooming’ in turn akin to thallos Greek ‘young sprout, green shoot’ and thallein Greek ‘to grow luxuriantly, to thrive.’ Thaleia or Thalia was one of the nine muses of classical mythology. As muse of comedy and bucolic poetry, Thalia was usually portrayed in antiquity holding the mask of comedy, a shepherd's staff and a wreath of ivy.

THALIA

This free-standing marble statue of Thalia holding the mask of comedy is a second-century CE Roman copy of a Greek original. Today Thalia stands ready to whack you with a slapstick in the hallways of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Thallium

From the same root as Thalia and Thalictrum comes the name of one of the chemical elements in the periodic table.

Thallium is a late scientific Latin form derived from the Greek word θαλλός thallos ‘green shoot.’ Thallium is a soft gray metal in the aluminum family of metals. It is also one of the heavy metals together with gold, platinum and lead. Thallium is toxic and so finds use in rat poisons and insecticides. It is also used in electronics parts and in the manufacture of glass.The metallic form of thallium has a tin-like appearance but oxidizes quickly so it is stored under oil.

At the 535 nanometer mark is a green thallium line in this spectroscopic span.

Thallium was discovered in 1862 when one of the minerals that contains the metal was heated and analyzed in a spectroscope. Each chemical element has a distinct array of colored lines under spectroscopic analysis. The brightest lines in thallium’s spectrum are green.

So the discovering scientist used the Greek word for ‘green shoot,’ thallos to name the newly found element, but he gave it the usual Latin elemental neuter noun ending of -ium, so it would fit with established element names like calcium, helium, potassium and sodium. Thallium has been used in several famous murders and so has earned the nickname “inheritance powder.”

Early meadow rue with droopy, rueful flowers

 

Meadow Rue Family: Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family, was named after its typical species, the buttercup, Ranunculus < rana Latin, frog + -unculus Latin, diminutive suffix, little, tiny. Ranunculus is Latin for ‘little frog,’ because buttercups like damp ditches and moist dells just as frogs do. The buttercup family includes about 85 genera and some 2,500 species, many of interest to gardeners, for example, anemone, clematis, delphinium, hepatica, aconite, trollius and nigella. Found all over the world, they thrive in colder northern climes and they tend to like dampness. Thus is the family a boon, not a bane, to frost-thumbs who are green-thumbs.

Species & Etymology

The word rue came into English first as an Old French form of a plant’s Latin name, ruta, itself from Greek rhute (original sense unknown). But modern botany has determined that meadow-rues are not related to the true rues of a separate botanical family called Rutaceae.

Nevertheless this second word rue as a plant name was influenced by a totally unrelated earlier English word for sadness, rue, which already existed in the Old English wordstock. Meadow rue was first so named because meadow rues’ leaves resemble the lacy foliage of true rues. The name was reinforced due to the once frequent use of the first word rue in English. Because the flowers are modestly pendant and hang down in some species, this lovely plant was early saddled with the mournful label of rue, from hreow Old English ‘sorrow, regret, sadness.’

As any gardener who has grown it will report, the cheerful foliage of meadow rue sets off the cloud of purple and yellow and pink and white flowers in a most uplifting manner. Calling this plant rue is like calling a tulip “widow’s mope.” Quite unacceptable. First it is not a rue; second it is not a moper.

Habitat Preference

Meadow rue likes soil that is not bone-dry. Humus-rich, damp, woodsy loam delights meadow rue. But it is not a fussbudget. Although meadow rue haunts moist perimeters of forest ponds and soggy sides of country ditches, meadow rue will burgeon tucked into a stand of ferns on the shady side of your house, anywhere pine-needle mulch or bark or an overdress of peat moss or scattered duff keeps soil lightly damp.

Meadow rues will abide full sun but prefer high shade, and in the shade they take less water to bloom. From a good greenhouse are available meadow rues for rock gardens and even as groundcovers for shade.

Specifying the Species

Thalictrum aquilegiifolium or ‘columbine meadow rue’ (Botanical Latin ‘with leaves like a columbine’) is one species familiar to Canadian green-thumbs, but by growing a few other species, one can have rue in blossom from late spring to early fall, after waiting two years if one starts this perennial from seed.

A reliable May bloomer in Canada is Thalictrum thalictroides whose common names include Rue-Anemone and Windflower. This little gem with starry white flowers spreads happily in damp duff under dappled shade. Rue anemone is native to deciduous woods and dampish banks in southern Ontario and Quebec.

Duff ?

Duff is a noun every gardener ought to know but does not. It is the decayed organic matter that lies on the floor of the forest or on the soil of, say, a long untended perennial bed. It may consist of dirt, decomposing gads and leaf mold and decaying lawn thatch propelled onto the soil’s surface by powerful lawnmowers. It is the natural compost of vegetative breakdown. Duff was borrowed into American English from Scottish slang.

You Want Mor ?

The sole synonym for duff is the noun mor. English borrowed mor from Danish where it means ‘humus.’

 

Chanterelle mushrooms of fleshy hue peek through forest duff. Cantharellus cibarius is edible, widely-distributed, rich yellow in color and, freshly picked, exudes a whiff of apricot aroma. But never eat a mushroom you have not precisely identified. Those lax in performance of mushroom identity may end up poisoned.

 

Thalictrum occidentale or Western Meadowrue has male and female flowers on separate plants. This species blooms from May to July and is native to British Columbia and Alberta.

Muskrat Weed or Tall Meadow Rue: Thalictrum pubescens

It is also called king-of-the-meadow and blooms from June to August in Canada along the wet banks of rivers, growing where it thrives as high as seven feet. Creeks and brooks swum by muskrats give one of its common names. The swampy marge of a little lake is a favorite sprouting place for tall meadow rue. Some tall rues contain thalictrine, a strong cardiac poison. So don’t go chewing on rue stems while trying to imitate a country yokel, nor should you permit Fluffles the cat to nibble naughtily upon it.

Beware of trying to transplant tall rue from nature to the back of your perennial bed as an accent plant. Tall rue is a moper.

Advice about Buying Tall Meadow Rue

If you buy unhybridized weedy stock or its humdrum seed, then during high winds or heavy rain, the cheap tall rues will fall over. They’ll fold like cheap lawn chairs. So buy a good tall hybrid like ‘Lavender Mist,’ a stiff-spined sentinel of a specimen. Do not try to transplant some spindly, tubercular scrag from behind Uncle Fred’s abandoned barn.

 

Keep these precepts clasped to your gardener’s heart and soon upon a summer’s day, enraptured, shall you too tiptoe through ferny dells afroth with meadow rue and the flickering felicity of fritillaries or other volitant lepidoptera.

© 2009 William Gordon Casselman

 

 

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canadiansayings@mountaincable.net