balmed

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If flowers are a plant's sex parts, and my botany textbook says it's so, then bee balm has evolved to be in-you-face flamboyant. Notice me! Surrender! It's the Lady GaGa (please pardon the pop culture reference) of the angiosperm world. If I were a bee, a wasp, a fly, or God forbid, even an earwig, it would be easy for me to become so balmed.

This particular bee balm was growing along the Clingman's Dome Road in the Great Smokies.


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native herbal

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Although this is not a tubular flower, ruby-throated hummingbirds are very fond of it, as are bees.

In the genus Monarda—named for Nicolás Monardes, who wrote a book in 1574 describing plants found in the New World—bee balm has a curious cultural history.

There are roughly 16 species found in our part of the world, several of which were used extensively by the Native Americans. Although bitter, due to the thymol in the leaves and buds, the plant tastes like a mix of spearmint and peppermint with oregano, an herb that it is closely related.

Various Indian tribes traditionally used bee balm as a seasoning for wild game, particularly birds. Also, the Blackfoot, Menominee, Ojibwa, Winnebago and other tribes, have a long history of using the annual wildflower as a medicinal plant.

- This photo was taken along Spring Creek in South Knoxville.