# Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) **Monarda fistulosa* of Linnaeus; horsemint; the Ojibwe *weca’w s wackw ’nek*, yellow light; kin of the Oswego tea, *Monarda didyma*, and of the horsemint *Monarda punctata* that gave the oil of the old shops* **Known today as.** *Monarda fistulosa*, the lilac-flowered bergamot of the prairies, meadows, and dry open woods of the Midwest, a square-stemmed mint whose whole plant smells of thyme and oregano: its oils are the same carvacrol and thymol. Kind: Plant > **Caution.** Nothing read for this entry describes harm from the plant or its tea; the oil of the related horsemint blisters the skin, by Rafinesque. ## What was it used for? The Flambeau Ojibwe, Smith says, “gather and dry the whole plant, boiling it in a vessel to obtain the volatile oil to inhale to cure catarrh and bronchial affections”; the Menomini used it for catarrh and the Meskwaki for colds, while the Forest Potawatomi, strangely, had no name or use for it. Densmore lists the horsemint among the medicines of the Minnesota Chippewa. Rafinesque, writing of the genus, found the Monardas “equal to camomile” and a more palatable tea, uniting the properties of sage, balm, and chamomile, used in fevers, pleurisies, colic, and gravel; the oil, chiefly from *M. punctata*, was an officinal rubefacient that Dr. Atlee rubbed on in chronic rheumatism, palsy, and the cold limbs of typhus, and two drops of it in sugar and water stopped vomiting. ## What does modern science say? The flower oil is mostly monoterpenes, p-cymene, -terpinene, and their kin, and the leaf oil mostly oxygenated ones, carvacrol and thymol above all; in cells both oils, and carvacrol, thymol, and -myrcene singly, opened the TRPA1 channel that senses irritants, which the authors offered as a cellular basis for part of the plant’s reputation. A dry extract of the herb left after distilling the oil was rich in rosmarinic acid and luteolin glucoside, scavenged radicals, reduced paw swelling and writhing in rodents, and caused no harm to rats at doses up to five grams a kilogram. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **carvacrol and thymol**: the oxygenated monoterpenes that dominate the leaf oil; both open the TRPA1 channel - **p-cymene, -terpinene, and -terpinene**: the monoterpene hydrocarbons that make up much of the flower oil - **rosmarinic acid and luteolin-7-O-glucoside**: the chief polyphenols of the herb left after distillation, 120 milligrams of phenolics per gram of extract **Mechanism.** The oils and their phenols activate TRPA1, the channel of irritant sensing, in transfected cells, which the authors offer as a basis for the plant’s traditional effects; the polyphenol extract scavenged radicals and reduced inflammation and writhing in rodents. **Dose.** The dried plant boiled and its vapour inhaled, by the Ojibwe; a tea, by Rafinesque; two drops of the related horsemint oil in sugar and water, by Atlee. **Standing.** A thyme of the prairie with a cell study and a rodent study behind it and no trial in people; harmless at five grams a kilogram in rats. ## What lore surrounds it? A plant of neighbours: the Ojibwe, Menomini, and Meskwaki all boiled it for colds while the Potawatomi beside them did not know it, and Rafinesque’s Oswego tea was named for the Indians of one New York lake. Its scent is the thyme of the Mediterranean kitchen grown wild on the prairie, and the chemists found the same two phenols in it. ## What did the older authorities say? **Huron H. Smith.** The Flambeau Ojibwe boil the dried plant and inhale the vapour for catarrh and bronchial affections; “in some sections, the whites use it as a domestic antiperiodic and diaphoretic.” Among the Forest Potawatomi “strangely enough” it had no name or use, “rather surprising because the neighboring tribes all make use of it.” **C. S. Rafinesque.** The Monardas, he says, were called Oswego tea “because first used by the Indians near Oswego lake”; equal to camomile and more palatable, more effectual in fevers and pleurisies, and used in piles, rheumatism, palsy, colic, and gravel. The oil, kept in the shops as a rubefacient, produces heat, redness, pain, and blistering on the skin; Dr. Atlee cured a hard hearing with the liniment rubbed on the head, and claimed it had cured a maniac. **Frances Densmore.** Horsemint, *Monarda mollis*, appears in her tables of the Chippewa materia medica beside the wild cherry and the strawberry, among the plants she gathered with their uses from the Minnesota and Wisconsin bands. ## Sources - Smith, H. H. (1932). *Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians*, Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 4(3), “Wild Bergamot.” Project Gutenberg, 49527. - Smith, H. H. (1933). *Ethnobotany of the Forest Potawatomi Indians*, Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 7(1), “Wild Bergamot.” Internet Archive, ethnobotany-of-the-forest-potawatomi-indians-by-huron-h.-smith-1933. - Densmore, F. (1928). *Uses of Plants by the Chippewa Indians*, Forty-fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, the tables of medicinal plants. Internet Archive, usesofplantsbych00dens. - Rafinesque, C. S. (1830). *Medical Flora, or Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America*, vol. 2, no. 64, “Monarda.” Internet Archive, b21468710_0002. - Ghosh, M., et al. (2020). Essential oils from *Monarda fistulosa*: chemical composition and activation of transient receptor potential A1 (TRPA1) channels. *Molecules* 25: 4873. doi:10.3390/molecules25214873 - Shanaida, M., Hudz, N., Jasicka-Misiak, I., & Wieczorek, P. P. (2021). Polyphenols and pharmacological screening of a *Monarda fistulosa* L. dry extract based on a hydrodistilled residue by-product. *Frontiers in Pharmacology* 12: 563436. doi:10.3389/fphar.2021.563436 --- *Wild bergamot.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-04. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/wild-bergamot Historical description, not medical advice.