Nikolai Mavrenkov already created a good description of the problem on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36893449/textarea-placeholder-isnt-shown-in-ie-11-being-rendered-using-react

I just can confirm it breaks in IE11, but works in IE10 (and other browsers) with React v15.0.2.

if (this._rootNodeID) {
    
    ReactDOMTextarea.updateWrapper(this);
  }
}
/**
 * Implements a <textarea> host component that allows setting `value`, and
 * `defaultValue`. This differs from the traditional DOM API because value is
 * usually set as PCDATA children.
 *
 * If `value` is not supplied (or null/undefined), user actions that affect the
 * value will trigger updates to the element.
 *
 * If `value` is supplied (and not null/undefined), the rendered element will
 * not trigger updates to the element. Instead, the `value` prop must change in
 * order for the rendered element to be updated.
 *
 * The rendered element will be initialized with an empty value, the prop
 * `defaultValue` if specified, or the children content (deprecated).
 */