Meadowsweet is native to most of Europe and western Asia, where it grows in damp meadows, ditches and stream edges, and is assessed as Least Concern. In Canada it is recorded as introduced or naturalized in Quebec, Ontario, the Atlantic provinces and British Columbia, and some Midwestern US states classify it as a noxious weed.
The name meadowsweet dates from the 16th century and originally meant a plant used to flavour mead, and the epithet ulmaria means elm-like. In the 16th century Elizabeth I of England favoured it for strewing on chamber floors. In 1838 Raffaele Piria extracted salicylic acid from its buds, and the later synthetic drug aspirin takes its name from the plant's former genus, Spiraea.