It's hard to say which species is the most popular, or the loveliest, but if I had to hazard a guess, it would be Bee Balm. No, make that Wild Bergamot. No, wait. It's Purple Berg...no, it has to be Lemon B... No. Uh. Hmmm.
Well, I can't decide. And that's why you could find them all in my garden.
Wild Bergamot, which grew wild near my home in Ohio, bears its small lavender flowers in dense clusters. It prefers the calcareous soils of dry fields, thickets and woodland borders, and can be found from the East Coast into Texas. In my garden, it wasn't uncommon to find a half-dozen or more Hummingbird moths hovering among the blossoms, uncoiling their long proboscis, and plunging them into the tubular flowers to sip from the well of nectar inside.
Bee Balm, which can be found from New York to Georgia, over to Tennessee and up into Michigan, prefers moist woods and thickets, often decorating stream banks. It is also known as Oswego Tea, a name which refers to the Oswego Indians of New York, who brewed a tea from its leaves. Early settlers also used it in this fashion, and after the Boston Tea Party, when imported tea was no longer available, Bee Balm was the substitute of choice.
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