Not exactly meadowsweet

This woodland wildflower, blooming in early June in Nichols Arboretum (Ann Arbor) remains a mystery to me. The plant whose blooms these most resemble in my wildflower guides is meadowsweet, Spiraea latifolia, but the leaves are lobed, which is wrong for that species. The bloom clusters do have the general appearance of a spiraea, but for me, the jury is still out…

Whatever it is, it makes a great banner, Elizabeth.
Is there a horticulturist at the arboretum who might know?
Do you have more pics of the foliage & whole plant?

It's very pretty. Could it be a Ninebark?

Excellent banner Elizabeth!

Nice banner! Ninebark is a good guess.

Very sweet…the flowers appear almost fizzy against the cool minty leaves

Very beautiful banner! I've seen those flowers on shrubs a lot as a kid, but I never knew what they were.

A lovely banner of a very pretty plant 😍

Here are the two source photos for the banner



and



Thanks @scvirginia for the suggestion of ninebark. I just checked on the recently released Nichols Arboretum 'Living Collections' app, which links their plant database to an interactive map of all of the identified plants in the arboretum, and found that there are wild type Physocarpus opulifolius plants in the general area of where I photographed the plant in question. What on earth did we ever do without the internet?

We used the smaller handheld books and looked through literally thousands of pages to try and ID the plant, tree, bush, flower, bird, mushroom, spider, insect, whatever you ran across. I still have my full collection of my favorite books, The Audubon Society Field Guides. They've served me so well in the past that I can't bring myself to get rid of them. And I just looked at current prices for them, no way I'm dumping them. They've held up very well through heavy use.

I'm not sure, but in your whole-plant photo, it looks like there's a stem on the left with somewhat 'shreddy' bark? Have a look at the last photo at this link, and see if you recall seeing bark that looked like that?
http://www.namethatplant.net/p...

It's a handsome plant for a handsome banner, and BONAP says P. opulifolius might be found growing wild in Ann Arbor area. http://bonap.net/MapGallery/Co...

PS Thanks for the acorn!

Thanks for the links, @scvirginia. I wasn't even aware of the existence of the second one. Good to know. The plant in question was photographed on June 5, 2011, so I'm afraid I don't remember whether the cracked bark you cited was present.

I'm with you, @Murky, about still clinging to all my print versions of field guides. I even got so I'd have two copies of the most used ones - one for the car, and one to keep next to the computer, for when I was uploading and editing photos, renaming files and adding captions. For me, the old school guides have one big advantage over smartphone apps and the internet, though. You can write in the margins when and where you saw a particular plant or critter. I realize there are websites where you can record your sightings, of birds and insects, in particular, but that's not the same as having all your personal sightings collected in one convenient package.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I'm happy, because I learned something from it...several somethings, actually. So, thanks again.