compound terminal clusters 1 ft. long or more. Stem: Stout,
erect, 3 to 11 ft. high, leafy, branching above. Leaves: Arranged
in threes, compounded of various shaped leaflets, the lobes
pointed or rounded, dark above, paler below.
Preferred Habitat- Open sunny swamps, beside sluggish water, low
meadows.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Quebec to Florida, westward to Ohio.

Masses of these soft, feathery flowers, towering above the ranker
growth of midsummer, possess an unseasonable, ethereal, chaste,
spring-like beauty. On some plants the flowers are white and
exquisite; others, again, are dull and coarser. Why is this?
Because these are what botanists term polygamous flowers, i.e.,
some of them are perfect, containing both stamens and pistils;
some are male only others, again, are female. Naturally an
insect, like ourselves, is first attracted to the more beautiful
male blossoms, the pollen bearers, and of course it transfers the
vitalizing dust to the dull pistillate flowers visited later. But
the meadow-rue, which produces a superabundance of very light,
dry pollen, easily blown by the wind, is often fertilized through
that agent also, just as grasses, plantains, sedges, birches,
oaks, pines, and all cone-bearing trees are. As might be
expected, a plant which has not yet ascended the evolutionary
scale high enough to economize its pollen by making insects carry
it invariably, overtops surrounding vegetation to take advantage
of every breeze that blows.

The EARLY MEADOW-RUE (T. dioicum), found blooming in open, rocky
woods during April and May, from Alabama northward to Labrador,