On both the Medford and Lumberton campuses, Monarda fistulosa, with the common names Bee Balm, Bergamot and Oswego Tea, dominate our meadows. From a distance they resemble purple daisies, but up close you see that each ‘petal’ is in fact a floret with a “tongue,” the typical flower of the mint family.
Bee Balm’s alternate name, Bergamot, refers misleadingly to the oriental citrus Bergamot that gives Earl Gray Tea, introduced in 1830, its distinctive flavor. However, over 60 years earlier in Massachusetts, colonists, following Iroquoian practice, substituted dried Bee Balm leaves*, which they called “Oswego Tea,” for the heavily taxed imported tea from England … subsequently dumped in the harbor by the Boston Tea Party.
*The active principle in dried Bee Balm leaves (Oswego Tea) is thymol (a relative of phenol), present in Listerine mouthwash.
“Oswego” in the Onondaga language means “the pouring out place,” the location where the Oswego River flows into Lake Ontario.
— Fred Kahan and Robert Koch