Its only species is Meum athamanticum,[1] a glabrous, highly aromatic (aroma compound), perennial plant.

Common names in the UK include baldmoney, meu or meum, and spignel (also spikenel and spiknel).

It is a plant of grassland, often on limestone,[citation needed][dubious – discuss] in mountain districts of Western Europe and Central Europe, its range extending as far south as the Sierra Nevada (Spain) of Andalucia, and central Bulgaria in the Balkans.

The delicate, feathery foliage has been used as a condiment and in the preparation of a wide variety of home remedies as a diuretic, to control menstruation and uterine complaints and to treat catarrh, hysteria and stomach ailments.

[3] The scent of the roots of Meum has much in common with those of two other edible/medicinal umbellifers: Levisticum officinale and Angelica archangelica, while the aromatic flavour of Meum leaves is somewhat like Melilot (which owes its aroma of new-mown hay to coumarin) and is communicated to milk and butter when cows feed on the foliage in spring.