Addisonia 47 



(Plate 216) 

 MONARDA DIDYMA 



Oswego-tea 



Native of eastern North America 



Family Lamiackae Mint Family 



Monarda didyma L. Sp. PI. 22. 1753. 



Our native herbs with flowers of an intense and striking shade of 

 red are quite limited in number. The subject of this note and the 

 cardinal flower — Lobelia cardinalis — stand almost alone in a class. 

 Moreover, its flowers rival those of the cardinal flower in splendor 

 of tint and mass, and it adapts itself more readily to the various 

 abnormal horticultural environments. The Oswego-tea is the largest 

 and the most showy of all the species of the genus Monarda. Its 

 maximum height is usually given as three feet. However, in the 

 high mountain meadows and ravines of the southern Appalachians 

 one may see clumps of plants six feet tall with brilliant flower-heads, 

 solitary at the ends of the square stems, or in tiers, four inches in 

 diameter. 



Like many of our aromatic herbs the bee-balm, as this plant is 

 often called, was used by the aborigines and the early settlers of 

 America for brewing a tea. As a result of this economic element, 

 as well as on account of its beauty, it early found its way into the 

 gardens of the pioneer, and it was probably cultivated in the 

 gardens of the Old World as early as the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century. 



The Oswego-tea is a large perennial herb, six feet tall or less, the 

 square stem pubescent, especially along the angles, rarely hirsute, 

 or sometimes glabrous. The leaves are borne in rather distant 

 pairs, with short hairy petioles and lanceolate to ovate serrate 

 blades which are acuminate at the apex and usually finely hairy on 

 both sides, especially on the veins. The flower-clusters are dense, 

 terminating the stem, and also the branches when present, thus 

 solitary, or in two or more tiers, each subtended by an involucre 

 of leafy, red-tinged bracts, the larger ones usually toothed and 

 closely resembling the upper pair of leaves which are also red-tinged. 

 The calyx is about a half inch long, tubular, slightly curved, finely 

 ribbed, minutely pubescent, with sharp teeth which are scarcely as 

 long as the diameter of the tube. The corolla is scarlet, often an 

 inch and a half long, two-lipped, the lips nearly as long as the tube, 



