Meadowsweet
This is one of my favorite plants. It was the original source of aspirin (which was in fact named after the plant--spirea being one of its Latin names.) The fragrance of the foliage and flower is wonderful, and has to be experienced--a hard-to-describe blend of sweet honey, almond, and a whiff of wintergreen, nothing like the resinous fragrances of most herbs. And indeed it comes from a different sort of place. As the name implies, it lives among grasses in the moist fertile meadows of Europe, far from the dry rocky limestone of our familiar Mediterranean herbs. Long used for pain and inflammation, Meadowsweet has a huge advantage over synthetic aspirin in that it is soothing to the stomach instead of irritating. A rewarding plant for part shade to full sun (Give it some shade in hot-summer climates.) The interlocking rhizomes of the crown send up numerous stalks of handsome compound leaves and foamy white to cream flowers. Strong red stems make great cut flowers and I even dry them to stake small floppy annuals. Start in pots in part shade. Seeds take about 6 weeks to germinate, barely covered and kept moist. Lives for years and spreads slowly. Cut for tea or tincture when the buds are just opening. 100 seeds