Wild Bergamot

-

Wild Bergamot, a culinary herb, member of the mint family, named for the Italian bergamot orange, which has a similar scent. It is also called bee balm, because it attracts bees, and Oswego tea, because Native Americans of the Oswego tribe used it to make a medicinal tea. It was introduced into cultivation by American botanist John Bertram in 1744, who found it growing on the shores of Lake Ontario in the United States. It was widely used for brewing tea during the boycott of British tea that followed the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Wild bergamot is native to eastern North America from New York to Michigan and south to Georgia and Tennessee. It survives winter temperatures as low as -34° C (-30° F). It is best adapted to moist soils in full sun to partial shade.

Wild bergamot is a herbaceous perennial, a plant with soft, green stems that lives for more than two growing seasons. The aboveground portions die each year after the first freeze, but the plant regrows from the roots each spring. The stems of wild bergamot form clumps and grow to a height of about 60 to 120 cm (about 2 to 4 ft). The stems are four-sided and may have some hairs when young but become hairless with age. The leaves are about 10 cm (about 4 in) long and may be either heart shaped or pointed at the tip and rounded at the base. They can be smooth or slightly hairy and have toothed edges and a strong mint scent. They are attached in pairs to leaf stems that are about 0.7 cm (about 0.3 in) long.

Wild bergamot blooms from midsummer to fall with flowers that are usually red, but may be pink, mauve, or white. The flowers are arranged in broad, flat-topped clusters at the end of stems. Each flower has a long tube, divided at the end into two flaring lips. The lower lip is divided into three segments and the tube is hairy on the inside. Wild bergamot has underground stems, called rhizomes, from which new plants grow, enabling it to spread aggressively. It can become a problem weed in a garden unless the spread of the roots is blocked by an underground barrier.

Wild bergamot is commonly grown as a garden plant. The dried leaves can be brewed to make a tea with sedative effects that is said to relieve nausea. The herb adds a sweet flavor and fragrance to desserts, jellies, and soft cheeses. The leaves are used to scent candles, perfumes, and potpourri.

Scientific classification: Wild bergamot is a member of the family Lamiaceae (formerly Labiatae). It is classified as Monarda didyma.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monocot and Dicot Seeds

-
Image
Monocotyledons (monocots) and dicotyledons (dicots) make up the two large groups of flowering plants, differentiated by their seed structures. Monocot seeds contain one cotyledon, or embryonic leaf. When these seeds germinate, the cotyledon remains below ground, absorbing nutrients from the endosperm, the starchy food supply in the seed. The coytledon transports these nutrients to the developing seedling. Dicot seeds contain two coytledons, which absorb and store the nutrients from the endosperm before the seed germinates. The cotyledons, thick with stored nutrients, emerge above ground during germination, and then transport the stored nutrients to the developing seedling. For a brief time, the cotyledons also serve as the first photosynthesizing leaves, but they wither and die when the true leaves emerge. related articles: flower flower variations in structure flower sexual reproduction flower pollination and fertilization flowering and the life cycle evolution of flowers angios
Read more

Gymnosperm

-
Image
Gymnosperm (Latin gymn-, “naked”; Greek sperma, “seed”), is a common name for any seed-bearing vascular plant without flowers. There are several types: the cycad , ginkgo , conifer , yew , and gnetophyte. Gymnosperms are woody plants, either shrubs, trees, or, rarely, vines (some gnetophytes). They differ from the other phylum of seed plants, the flowering plants (see Angiosperm ), in that the seeds are not enclosed in carpels but rather are borne upon seed scales arranged in cones. The gymnosperms are the most ancient seed plants; they appear to have arisen from fern ancestors in the Devonian Period. Cycads retain the most primitive characters of the extant seed plants. Gnetophytes are considered from morphological and molecular evidence to share a common ancestry with the flowering plants. Living gymnosperms are distributed worldwide, with a majority, particularly the conifers, in temperate and subarctic regions. Cycads and gnetophytes are mainly tropical to subtropical. There are ab
Read more

Cedar Tree

-
Image
Cedar (tree) is a common name for three or four species of large trees native to mountainous areas of North Africa and Asia. Cedar trees belong to the pine family, the members of which have needlelike leaves and, like all conifers, bear their seeds on scales clustered into cones. They differ from other members of the family in their evergreen four-angled leaves borne on short side-branches. The genus produces fragrant, durable, red-colored wood used in construction and cabinetry. The name cedar is also applied to other conifer trees with fragrant wood (see Cypress ). The well-known white cedar grows in swamps of the eastern United States and reaches a height of 24 m (80 ft). An arborvitae is also called cedar; western cedar and eastern white cedar are both important timber trees in the United States. Eastern red cedar, widespread in the eastern United States, is a juniper . A flowering tropical American mahogany is known as Spanish or West Indian cedar. Incense Cedar Native to wester
Read more