(lively music) - I am standing in what looks like a sea of wild bergamot, beautiful wild bergamot, AKA horse mint, AKA beebalm, and we'll talk about that.

But first I wanna point out, it looks like this beautiful native plant is growing in great abundance.

And here in this fragmented little hidden gem of an area it is, but elsewhere, it's a native threatened plant due to habitat loss.

So that's very important because that also impacts the way I choose to harvest not only the bergamot plant, but all of our wild native plant species.

So today, like I said, wild bergamot, it is a member of the mint family, and interestingly, any member of the Mint family will have a square stem, so not round, square.

And you can notice it by just looking at it, but also when you feel it.

So when I harvest the wild bergamot plant, I take only the top third and only if necessary.

Typically I'll just go for the leaf shoots that are coming up when they're young and tender.

I like to leave the plant as much intact as possible.

So again, today for the purposes of science, I have clipped the top third of a bergamot plant.

So again, the stem is square.

So a telltale IDing characteristic also is that the leaves are opposite each other.

So it's almost like they're shaking hands and the stem is in between them, so they're just straight across from each other.

And then the flowering part consists of kind of a pinkish purple long lobed petals, which brings me to something interesting.

While I'm talking we might be visited by several bees, different types of bees, all kinds of insects, different pollinators, hummingbirds, hummingbird moths love this plant.

So this is a very beneficial plant to have in general.

Interestingly with the bee, oh, and we have a bee right back there.

So I'm gonna guess because that bee is on the petals, it's a long tongued bee and nature blessed it with that long tongue because it's able to get down the long lobes of the flowering petals and get that nectar.

Other types of bees that don't have that gift will actually literally just tear into the bottom of the flowering part of the plant to get at that nectar.

If I'm looking at it for edible and medicinal purposes, this plant is one of my favorite things to utilize and harvest.

A multitude of nutritional benefits and medicinal.

When I harvest the plant, as I mentioned, I take only the top third if I am needing to, but I like to leave it as intact as possible.

So again, utilizing the young leaves shooting up, they can be used in salads, they can be ground into kind of a spice.

They are similar sort of in smell and taste to oregano, which is surprising to me because you would think it would smell a little bit more minty being from the mint family.

But all else, it smells like oregano.

If you have this in your yard or around a garden, it will deter the deer and the rabbits because they don't like that smell of oregano.

So the young leaves can be used in salads.

But today we're gonna talk about tea.

And really I am swimming in a sea of tea.

That's what I see when I see this beautiful plant.

As I mentioned, it's ingested as a tea for those medicinal purposes.

It aids in relieving symptoms of cold and flu, minor headaches associated with that.

And it's wonderful on the throat as well.

So to make the tea, you simply harvest the leaves and you harvest the flowers and you're gonna dry those.

And I just air dry them naturally in a dark space.

I put them usually in a brown paper bag or a box, and then I just cover it with like some paper towels so that they can still get some air circulation through there.

When they're totally dry, I'm gonna take them and grind them up to however I prefer to have my tea.

Some people love powder, some people like the dried leaves and the petals whole.

I plop those in a reusable teabag and I boil one cup of water.

And then I'm gonna drop in about two teaspoons of my dried bergamot.

And there you go, you have a medicinally beneficial healthy tea.

And also this is a mosquito repellent, so people do make balms out of this.

They also make tinctures and use that as a spray.

(lively music)