Queen of the Prairie

Did you know

• The Queen of the Prairie reaches 8 feet tall and produces enormous cotton-candy-pink flower clusters up to a foot wide, like cumulus clouds tinted at sunset.
• Once carpeting wet tall-grass prairies from Pennsylvania to Iowa, this stately wildflower has lost over 95% of its native habitat—it now survives mostly in remnant prairie preserves and gardens.
• Its scent is faintly almond and honey-like, attracting clouds of bumblebees and beetles to the towering blooms throughout July.
• Native Americans of the Great Lakes region used filipendula roots as a heart medicine—modern research has confirmed they contain salicylates similar to aspirin.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of the prairie 'queens' in his journals, describing the species as 'a vegetable hippocrene'—a flowing fountain of rose.

Color meanings

Uses

• Rain gardens
• Pollinator gardens
• Prairie restoration
• Cut flowers