Lemon Balm
"I can easily imagine now that the sun has reached the edge of that rice-field, and the old fisher-woman is gathering herbs for her supper by the side of the pond."
-Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941)
(1861-1941)
Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is a most pleasant herb for scent & beauty, but impossible to restrain. When we bought the house some years back, a huge patch of lemon balm beside the back stoop was just so gorgeous spring through autumn that I tolerated it, but having so much of it dying back in late autumn was just too homely to have right by the door, plus it was self-seeding all over the yard. When I dug out the mother-plant I was surprised that it had huge woody roots, up to three or four inches thick like the root of an old shrub.
Years after I elected to get rid of it, it continues to spring up at will wherever it likes, & most of the time I pull it as a weed, though I've given up on the idea of ever really controlling it & instead adjust my mind to enjoying it on its own terms. I periodically let one grow up big & bushy for its beauty & to harvest the leaves. These will grow three feet tall & wide in a single year. In early to late summer they produce tiny white flowers too small to be significant but prettily dotting these minty subshrubs.
As a medicinal herb, Lemon balm is thought to settle nerves when taken as a tea, & has very mildly antiviral qualities. It contains many flavorful volatile oils that make it excellent to cook with in any manner one might use other members of the mint family. It grows so rapidly you could take a full harvest once a week, & small bits of it every day if you wanted it for daily culinary purposes fresh from the yard, & never run out until winter stops it growing.
If used raw in salads or as garnish, the youngest palest leaves are best, but fried with, say, country fried potatoes & wild nettles, any unstemmed leaf is fine. The leaves can also be dried & retain a huge percentage of their flavor for use as a dried herb or to brew as tea in winter.
In the Elizabethan era, dandies & ladies would carry upon them a small bouquet called a Tussy Mussy, consisting greatly of Lemon balm, thyme, or oregano which could be held to one's nose while walking along sewage-ditched streets of London.
This native to southern Europe & northern Africa has naturalized around the globe in every warm or temperate zone. It likes rich moist soil, & may become spotty & unpleasant if left too dry, though it is suprising how harsh an area can be for its self-seeded offspring to do just swell. It accepts more shade than most herbs, & develops richer odor & flavor with partial rather than full sunlight. It contains a natural insecticide so is not much troubled by insects.