© Janet Davis
I
love the shaggy, mop-top flowers of native bergamots or beebalms, so-called
because they are a favorite nectar flower of bees, especially bumblebees. There are beebalms that are perfect for dry meadows,
and others that perform well in a mixed border.
Bergamot is the name for the aromatic oil
extracted from the Southern Italian bergamot orange, Citrus aurantium ssp.bergamia,
that has been used by Europeans and Britons for hundreds of years in perfumery
and as the flavoring agent in Earl Gray tea.
Yet it’s easy to understand why the common name was given to Monarda,
a North America mint family genus with aromatic foliage emitting a similar
scent when crushed.
The
botanical name was given by Linnaeus and honors Nicolas Monardes a 16th
century Spanish physician and botanist who established a botanical garden in
Seville, Spain and wrote about wild bergamot or wild oregano (M. fistulosa)
in his 1574 herbal on botanical and medicinal discoveries from the new world,
i.e. the West Indies. (In his writing,
Monardes also extolled the medicinal virtues of tobacco, making it a remedy
that would be widely used by apothecaries in western Europe for two centuries.)
A
plant of moist woodlands and meadows, scarlet bergamot (Monarda
didyma) might be one of the most successful native northeast North American
perennials in the worldwide commercial trade. This species was discovered in
1744 by English plant explorer John Bartram, who collected seed near Oswego,
N.Y., on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, where American Indians had long
crushed the leaves to make tea --
hence, one of its common names, Oswego Tea.
In fact, it is reported that after the Boston Tea Party, colonists who
were boycotting English tea turned to the native herb to make a substitute
tea.
Taller
lavender-pink wild bergamot, Monarda fistulosa—which is not quite
as showy as M. didyma, but nevertheless a good tall perennial for
sunnier, drier habitats—had already been collected in the 1600s by John
Tradescant II but was subsequently lost to commerce. Like many plants which British explorers collected in centuries
past and introduced into cultivation,
(goldenrod, tradescantia, turtlehead, snakeroot, stokesia, trumpet vine,
eastern columbine, Virginia 
creeper), scarlet bergamot gained prominence
in the established ornamental landscapes of Great Britain and Europe far
earlier than in the colonial gardens of their native New World.
Native
to rich woods, damp meadows and riversides of Quebec, northern New York and
Michigan south to Georgia, scarlet bergamot likes full sun, provided the soil
is adequately moist, but will take afternoon shade as well. With its running rootstocks, it can be
somewhat invasive but is very easily controlled by pulling unwanted shoots. Mildew can be a problem, particularly in dry
soil where summers are hot and humid but this can be avoided by giving it rich
soil and plenty of air circulation around the plants. It grows to about 3 feet (1 m).
Apart
from the bees which favor all beebalms, scarlet bergamot is one of the few red
flowers on which butterflies like to nectar, even though they cannot detect
color in the red spectral range, but are attracted by fragrance, or perhaps by
ultra-violet markings, which are invisible to us. Hummingbirds also love all beebalms.
There
are many excellent cultivars derived from hybridizing M. didyma and M.
fistulosa. ‘Croftway Pink’ is a
tallish soft rose, ‘Prairie Night’ is a deep violet-purple, ‘Blue
Stocking’ is violet-blue and, ‘Adam’
has large, red blooms. Three cultivars said to be mildew-resistant are pink
‘Beauty of Cobham,’ red ‘Gardenview Scarlet’ and the Manitoba introduction (and
one of my favorites) clear-pink ‘Marshall’s Delight’.
Scarlet
bergamot and its hybrids make delightful companions to phlox, purple
coneflower, daylilies and other summer perennials that appreciate
moisture-retentive soil. Wild bergamot
is lovely with sun-loving native perennials like Rudbeckia subtomentosa.
Adapted from a column that
originally appeared in the Toronto Sun