Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by stolons.

Time of bloom: June to August.

Seed-time: August to October.

Range: Nova Scotia to Manitoba, southward to West Virginia, and in the Rocky Mountains to Colorado.

Habitat: Alluvial banks, brushy upland pastures, and borders of woods.

Not even sheep care to eat Calamint, and if the plant had not such a preference for partial shade its stoloniferous habit would make it a bad weed. Stems erect, slim, square, hairy, ten to twenty inches tall, usually with a few branches but often simple. Leaves also hairy, variable in shape but mostly a long-pointed oval, sometimes toothed, sometimes entire or wavy-edged, the upper ones sessile, the lower ones having short petioles. Flowers in dense axillary and terminal clusters, the latter nearly globular; the subtending bracts bristly-hairy and as long as the calyx, which is also hairy; corolla lavender, pink, or whitish, its tube not much exceeding the calyx-teeth, the upper lip entire or only slightly notched, the lower lip three-lobed and spreading; stamens four, ascending, the longer pair exserted. Seeds four small, ovoid, smooth nutlets. (Fig. 250.)

Fig. 250. - Calamint or Wild Basil (Satureja vulgaris). X 1/4.

Means Of Control

Deep hoe-cutting, before seeds are developed or stolons take root.