By Any Other Name

Because Chipping Norton is nearby, the story often surfaces of a local cleric, Edward Stone, who picked up on local folklore about the theraputic effects of willow bark, put it together with his prior experience of the Peruvian tree bark from which quinine is extracted, and created extracts of willow that he found to be effective in treating 'agues' (his own and others). Having connections in influential circles, he was able to present his findings to the Royal Society

What he had actually discovered is a compound that came to be called 'salicylic acid', after 'Salix', the Latin genus of the willow tree. This is a simple version of the active ingredient in asprin. These events happened in the mid 18th century. What I did not know until today is that, like so many discoveries, this one sat on the shelf, unexploited, for four decades, until a small start-up company called Bayer was looking for potential drugs whose manufacture might turn a profit

By then, other chemists had isolated a pain-relieving compound from the plant in this picture, and it was discovered to be the same acid. Bayer figured out a manufacturing process and a non-natural acetyl salt of the acid that has less side effects. They picked the brand name 'Asprin', and the rest is history. 'Asprin' is derived from 'Spiraea', which was then the Latin name for this plant, meadowsweet

I'm familiar with meadowsweet from Welsh holidays and from some of the wet watermeadows in the flood plain of the Thames and its tributaries, but it has been a relative rarity on our free-draining Cotswold hills, or the Midlands fields of my childhood. My impression is that it is becoming more widespread and abundant, and happy to occupy wide roadside verges that are not in a damp valley. I wonder if it is a plant that is favoured by the changing climate, and perhaps particularly by this endlessly wet year

It smells delicious (although not necessarily to everyone, apparently). It has a history of being strewn on floors to make rooms smell good, of being included in pot pourri and bridal bouquets, and being used as a medicinal herb in its own right. It is also used as a flavouring and sweetener, and its other ancient name is 'meadwort': It was used to flavour mead. I feel I should have known this. I don't make mead, because I don't really like the flavour. Perhaps I should gather some mesdowsweet and reconsider