About three years ago, we decided to plant a prairie garden. Bryan designed it as an elongated S. The goal was to make it easy to mow alongside it and also to make it easy to reach into the middle of it without stepping on the plants. We followed the prescribed process of tilling up the space, mowing it off the first couple of years, seeding it, and waiting. And it’s all beginning to pay off. We have several flowers blooming in the garden now and are looking forward to more as plants get established.
One of the showy plants this year is wild bergamot, (Monarda fistulosa), also known as bee balm, horse mint, or mint leaf. A member of the mint family, (Lamiaceae), the leaves are strongly scented, evoking both mint and oregano.
Native to North America, wild bergamot is a perennial plant that spreads both by seed and by sending out rhizomes. It grows from two to four feet tall, and its leaves are four to six inches long and about two inches across. Like most plants in the mint family, Bergamot stems are square and smooth.
The flower head starts as a round cluster one to two inches across at the ends of the branches. The flowers in the center of the cluster bloom first, with the outside blooms coming later. The result is a wreath of tiny tubular flowers surrounding a green center. One source said it reminded her of tiny fireworks. The flowers are lavender to pink, and are tubular with three petals that form a lip for the bees to stand on.
Although wild bergamot is often called bee balm, it is a cousin to several other species such as scarlet bee balm (Monarda didyma) that share the genus Monarda and the common name bee balm. The genus name Monarda was assigned in honor of a 16th-century Spanish botanist who thought that the scent of the leaves reminded him of the bergamot orange. The bergamot orange is what gives Earl Gray Tea its distinctive flavor, but it is a citrus fruit, not a member of the mint family.
Pollinators love wild bergamot. A wide variety of insects, including long-tongued bees, bee flies, butterflies, skippers and hummingbird moths drink the nectar. A small black sweat bee (Dufourea monardae) has evolved along with the bergamot and now specializes as a pollinator of bergamot and its close cousins. Other bees and wasps are attracted to the flowers and even ruby-throated hummingbirds take a sip now and then. The caterpillars of a couple of native moths (the hermit sphinx moth and the gray marble moth) feed on the foliage, and a seed bug can be found in the flower heads. With all that activity, the wild bergamot adds tremendously to the ecosystem as well as being a beautiful addition to the landscape. Deer and other mammals aren’t very fond of it; probably because of its strong mint and oregano flavor and because eating it can upset their stomachs.
Wild bergamot is pretty disease-resistant, and the host of insects that drink its nectar, eat its pollen and nibble its leaves don’t bother it. It can also host powdery mildew, a fungus that doesn’t generally hurt the plant but makes it less attractive to human gardeners.
For the past three years our prairie garden looked pretty sad. It’s a joy this year to discover the wild bergamot and other flowers holding forth among the grasses.
Photo by Author. Alt text: A clump of frilly, purple flowers advertises for pollinators in a prairie stand. Wild bergamot produces a head that supports dozens of individual, complete flowers the size of the petals of other flowers, like a daisy.