First herbs: bee balm.
Darcey is hosting this month’s herbal blog party. She asked us to write about the plant that first inspired us.
Well. I’ve been playing with plants since before I could talk, and there were so many that I loved when I was little. Plantain, ground ivy and all-heal in the yard; chives, thyme and lemon balm in my mother’s wagon-wheel herb garden; mayweed and blackberry by the barn; yarrow and milkweed in the hayfield; crabapple and hawthorn in the thicket; spearmint in the creek and coltsfoot on the bank; ramps and mountain mint up in the woods. So many. But I think the plant that made the strongest impression on me in the first year or two of my life was bee balm.
Our farm was back up against a mountain at the sinks of a decent-sized creek. There was a relatively active beaver meadow about halfway down the valley, and in the summer it was covered with bee balm. All kinds of bee balm—light purple, dark purple, red, pink, white. Little sprouts of color in the tall grass. A treasure hunt.
And the smell. If you haven’t smelled bee balm, go smell some as soon as you can. Taste it while you’re at it. Make some tea. It’s calming and comforting and enlivening. We drank it all winter when I was small—sometimes mixed with lemon balm, sometimes on its own.
Some of my earliest, happiest memories are of picking bee balm with my mother. She loves the plant as much as I do, and always has a jar of the dried herb in her cupboard for tea. I think if our family has a plant emblem, it’s definitely bee balm. Perfect, considering we have a family tendency to just the kind of nervous irritation and dis-embodiment that bee balm’s best at soothing.
A rambling note about what to call this plant:
When I was growing up, we used the name “bee balm” to refer to several species in the genus Monarda (M. didyma, M. fistulosa and M. media). In books you sometimes see them called wild bergamot or Oswego tea. Many herbalists just say “Monarda,” and one (the great Matthew Wood) made up his own name for M. fistulosa: sweet leaf. But I still like “bee balm” best. The other names ring hollow to me.
Europeans called it wild bergamot because M. didyma smells like old-world bergamot (Citrus bergamia). But I think the plant deserves its own name. It was called Oswego tea because the Oswego nation used it for tea. That’s better, but just about all the Eastern nations used it for tea. It doesn’t say much about the plant. The genus Monarda is named for Nicolas Monardes, the Spanish scientist who first described the plant to Europeans. Fine, but the plant was around long before he described it. Matt Wood tried to remedy the situation by calling it “sweet leaf,” but the thing is, I don’t find it sweet. As Henriette says, it’s “hot as a very hot thing.” To my ears, “bee balm” is the only name that actually describes the plant. It’s a soothing plant (balm) that attracts bees. Yes. Simple.
PS: That’s me in the picture when I was about two.
darcey said,
October 2, 2007 @ 10:26 am
yay for bee balm! here the wildflower books call it horsemint. GAH!
Kiva Rose said,
October 2, 2007 @ 10:41 am
I like bee balm as a name too, but I’ve heard it applied to other plants as well, which makes it confusing. I use Monarda as a default, and I do hate doing anything by default. hrrrmmm.
Love the pic!
crabappleherbs said,
October 3, 2007 @ 11:08 am
Darcey, I’ve usually heard only Monarda punctata called horsemint. Have you heard it applied to others too?
Which non-Monarda plants have you heard called bee balm, Kiva?
Kiva Rose said,
October 3, 2007 @ 4:08 pm
Oh, people round here call the Agastaches bee balm a lot, and in PA I heard people call lemon balm beebalm, and there was some tree in the SE they called Bee Balm too, but I don’t know what it is.
Here they call Agastache pallida horsemint or dragonhead or beebalm, which is confusing since it isn’t any of those things. And they call Monarda fistulosa var. menthaefolia (the higher elevation Monarda here) Oregano de la Sierras or Mexican Oregano or just Wild Oregano which makes sense cuz it tastes just like Oregano. Does yours?
crabappleherbs said,
October 4, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
Wow. Around here, as far as I can tell, bee balm is always one of the three Monardas I mentioned.
And yes, our M. fistulosa does taste somewhat like oregano. But not *exactly* like it. I’ve had some western ones that really tasted *just* like oregano.
Dr. Jayashree Joshi said,
October 8, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
I have enjoyed reading this blog. I hadn’t heard of bee-balm before.
I’m a Holistic Pediatrician in India and I’m interested in all things herbal.
Please look me up on my website www.farawaysister.com You will be surprised to see how many herbs have now gone global ( for instance, I use crab apple flower extract - a Bach flower extract - in my practice, though it doesn’t grow here! ).
Jan S. said,
October 9, 2007 @ 4:08 pm
I will definatly check out Bee Balm. Very cute photo. I don’t think I have ever seen you in pink before. I like the hat too.