Butter-bur

Butter-bur (Petasites vulgaris) is a perennial Composite, common in wet meadows and beside streams, of which the huge simple and somewhat rhubarb-like leaves form a very characteristic foreground in such landscapes. The small sub-dicaceous whitish-purple flower-heads are borne in exuberant racemose masses, which come up like those of its ally Coltsfoot (Tussilago, q.v.), in early spring, before the leaves.