Early Meadow-rue, Thalictrum dioicum, Native Minnesota Wildflower plant, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

	Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
	Common Name	Scientific Name	Plant Family	Garden Location	Prime Season
	Early Meadow-rue	Thalictrum dioicum L.	Buttercup (Crowfoot) Ranunculaceae	Woodland	Spring to Early Summer
Other names and notes	A prevalent spring plant of the woodland areas, the stems can be two or more feet in height, the 4 to 5 part flowers are greenish-yellow or can be purplish, with the stamens drooping, yellow anthers, and appearing in open clusters. The petal like sepals fall away early. Flowers and leaves form at about the same time. The leaves are thin and have blunt multiple ( 3 to 12) lobes, are on long stalks and are 1 to 4 times 3-parted. Plants are dioecious, that is, have either male or female flowers and the species name, dioicum, refers to this, being from the Greek meaning "of two houses". Read Eloise Butler's notes below.



	Above. Early growth with the leaves unfolding and flower clusters showing.

Notes: This plant is indigenous to the Garden area. Eloise Butler catalogued it on May 25, 1907. It is native to the wooded parts of Minnesota in most counties except rarer in the dryer SW quadrant.

Eloise Butler wrote: "It is not uncommon in Maying parties to hear the explanation, “Oh, what a pretty fern!” as the attention is attracted to the delicate many-branched leaf of the Early Meadow Rue, one of the crowfoot family. The leaf stalk of the meadow rue is branched four times into three divisions, so that it bears in all eighty-one leaflets. The leaf is as pleasing as that of a fern and adds an airy fern-like grace to a bouquet. Ferns, by the way, have three characters by which they may be distinguished from other plants - a coiled leaf-bud which unrolls at the base when the leaf expands, displaying a forked venation (a second peculiarity of the fern); and, later, some brown or yellowish dots usually on the under side in which are developed spores. Ferns have neither flowers nor seeds, while one individual of the Early Meadow Rue has a spray of tiny pollen-bearing flowers, and another the seed-producing flowers. These separated flowers are pollinated by the wind." Published May 28, 1911, Sunday Minneapolis Tribune. (Full Article)

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References: Plant characteristics are generally from sources 15, 16, 30, 31, 33, W2 & W3. Distribution principally from W2 and also 31, 34 and W1. Planting history generally from 1, 4 & 4a. Other sources by specific reference. See Reference List for details.

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