Cultivation
In North America, Melissa officinalis has escaped cultivation and spread into the wild.
Lemon balm requires light and at least 20 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) to germinate.
Lemon balm grows in clumps and spreads vegetatively as well as by seed. In mild temperate zones, the stems of the plant die off at the start of the winter, but shoot up again in spring.
Melissa officinalis may be the "honey-leaf" (μελισσόφυλλον) mentioned by Theophrastus. It was in the herbal garden of John Gerard, 1596. There are many cultivars of Melissa officinalis, such as:
- M. officinalis 'Citronella'
- M. officinalis 'Lemonella'
- M. officinalis 'Quedlinburger'
- M. officinalis 'Lime'
- M. officinalis ‘Variegata’
- M. officinalis ‘Aurea’
(M. officinalis ‘Quedlinburger Niederliegende’ is an Improved variety bred for high essential oil content.)
Read more about this topic: Melissa Officinalis
Famous quotes containing the word cultivation:
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)