The bee-balm and bergamot commemorates Nicolás Bautista Monardes (1512–88), physician and botanist from Seville, son of an Italian bookseller and one of the most distinguished physicians of his day (Guerra, 1961). He entered the University of Alcalá de Henares, where he obtained a degree in the arts in 1530 and his medical degree in 1533. He had his practice in Seville, at its University from 1547. While most biographers (Barnhart, 1965) give the year of his birth as 1493, this seems unlikely and 1512 is given in the catalogue of the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa (Lavoura, 2001) and by other bibliographic sources. It is to Monardes that we owe early information about medicinal plants from the New World, published in three parts (1569, 1571, 1574), the fi rst one being Dos libros, el uno que trata de todas las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que sirven al uso de la Medicina, y el otra que trata de la Piedra Bezaar, y la Yerua Escuerçonera (two books, one which deals with all the things which come from West Indies, which are of use in medicine, and the other which deals with the bezoar stone and the herb called Escorzonera (Scorzonera hispánica or Scorzonera humilis)). The second book includes some of the earliest information on tobacco; it was translated into English by John Frampton as Joyfull Newes out of the newe founde Worlde (1577).

He describes tobacco being smoked by the Indians, but no English herbal in the next hundred years describes this usage. This new plant from Latin America was regarded as a wonderful panacea, and tobacco became known as Herba sancta – the holy plant – because of its supposedly curative virtues.Monardes was responsible for much of the enthusiasm for tobacco as a medicine. The sunflower appears here for the first time. Monardes also wrote a book expressing distrust of exotic drugs from the Americas, Diálogo llamado pharmacodilosis (1536), another on venesection in Greek and Arabic medicine, De secanda vena in pleuriti inter Grecos et Arabes concordia (1539), and about the medicinal properties of citrus fruits and roses, De rosa et partibus eius (1540).

In 1537 he married Catalina Morales, the daughter of Garcia Perez Morales, professor of medicine at Seville. They had seven children. In addition to his medical practice he had a business in importing drugs and in the slave trade – which later bankrupted him. After his wife’s death in 1577 he became a cleric (Complete dictionary of scientific biography, 2008). He is reported to havedied from a cerebral haemorrhage. If this was at the age of 95 it would have been extraordinary at that era in history. However, an examination of the ages at which he graduated and published make it likely that he was born around 1512, as proposed in the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa catalogue, and died aged 76. His works were published in 42 editions and in six languages.

Monarda didyma ‘Violet Queen’ and M. fi stulosa in the family Lamiaceae are upright, hardy perennials which hail from North America. The brightly coloured flowers are popular with bees and butterfl ies when grown in a sunny border. They suffer in dry weather so we give them a good mulch of well-rotted manure in early spring and keep them well watered in summer.(Clare Beacham)

The following notes refer to the related species M.didyma. The Oswego tribe of Native Americans used Monarda didyma as a tea on account of its fragrance, which resembles that of bergamot oil (which comes from Citrus bergamia). Austin (2004) reports it was used by the Creeks and Osage to cause perspiration, and to ward off rheumatism by the Alabama, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek. A tea made from the leaves was used to relieve headache by the Catawba, and the Osage also used it for pain relief and coughs, chest complaints and fevers. We also grow M. fistulosa, which, when first discovered, was described with an excellent drawing as Origanum fistulosum canadense in Cornut’s Canadensium plantarum historia (1635).