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.

DOMLazyTree.queueText(lazyTree, contentToUse);
      } else if (childrenToUse != null) {
        var mountImages = this.mountChildren(
          childrenToUse,
          transaction,
          context
        );
        for (var i = 0; i < mountImages.length; i++) {
          DOMLazyTree.queueChild(lazyTree, mountImages[i]);
        }
      }
    }
  },
  /**
   * Receives a next element and updates the component.
   *
   * @internal
   * @param {ReactElement} nextElement
   * @param {ReactReconcileTransaction|ReactServerRenderingTransaction} transaction
   * @param {object} context
   */
  receiveComponent: function(nextElement, transaction, context) {
    var prevElement = this._currentElement;
    this._currentElement = nextElement;
    this.updateComponent(transaction, prevElement, nextElement, context);
  },
  /**
   * Updates a DOM component after it has already been allocated and
   * attached to the DOM. Reconciles the root DOM node, then recurses.
   *