Rob's plants home garden plants wildlife seed photos plant sale journal topics plantlinks fun guestbook Melissa officinalis

 

Common name lemon balm Family lamiaceae Life cycle perennial herb Flowers white (summer) Size 4 ft Light full sun Cultural notes not fussy, drought-tolerant Wonderfully fragrant foliage. Not invasive by roots, but deadhead to prevent seeding. For us, it's right on the border between 'weed' and 'desirable plant'. I wouldn't want to be without it altogether, but its ability to spread itself around can get somewhat tedious. At least it's not hard to extract the whole plant where it's not welcome.

We left this plant behind in our Pennsylvania garden (and wish it well); we don't grow it in Houston.

About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Melissa officinalis

I welcome comments about my web pages; feel free to use the form below to leave feedback about this particular page. For the benefit of other visitors to these pages, I will list any relevant comments you leave, and if appropriate, I will update my page to correct mis-information. Faced with an ever-increasing onslaught of spam, I'm forced to discard any comments including html markups. Please submit your comment as plain text. If you have a comment about the website as a whole, please leave it in my guestbook. If you have a question that needs a personal response, please e-mail me.