bee bush/bee brush, again!
Just took a couple of minutes at the end of the work day to do a search on
"bee bush" and see if it turned up any definitive information. On one page
from the web site "Maddog'n'Miracles (photos - Texas Wildflowers)"
<http://www.io.com/~maddog/photos_f.htm>
there's a long list of flowers by common name only; No. 67 is "bee bush."
When you click on the name it retrieves an image (without annotation)
<http://www.io.com/~maddog/pho_bbus.jpg>
that looks like one of the Aloysias.
Also, a page from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
<http://www.bbg.org/gardening/botany/reproduction/pollinators.html> lists
"bee bush" as being Aloysia gratissima. So I think it's very possible this
is the plant on Linda's drought-tolerant list.
However, it's clear that there are a lot of other plants called "bee bush"
too:
One page located in the UK called "Flowers & Trees"
<http://web.onetel.net.uk/~rcplatts/flow/> identifies "bee bush" as an
Echium. It has a small thumbnail image of "bee bush" and a larger image at
<http://web.onetel.net.uk/~rcplatts/flow/pages/echiumbeebush.htm>. The
flower is blue.
Just to make things more interesting, on a site concerning ecotourism on
the Caribbean island of Nevis <www.nevisisland.com/ecotourism.htm>there was
a mention of
"Bee Bush (Coralita) The leaves are used to reduce
swellings, for the used of diabetes
and blood pressure"
Unfortunately no picture!
Finally, a lot of pages cited Willa Cather's _My Antonia_ as mentioning the
bee bush: "The pink bee-bush stood tall along the sandy roadsides". One
such page, at <www.plainsfolk.com/seminar/details.htm>says "The bee-plant
is one of the showiest wildflowers of the
plains. It stands
waist-high and exhibits clusters of fetching
pink blossoms. It's not
a good flower to pick, however,
because it stinks
terribly. The leguminous plant grows best
in disturbed ground and
sandy soils--near windmills in
pastures, for instance,
or on sandy roadsides. Once again
Cather has the
environmental details just right."
Again, no common name. But, I did find a short reference to "pink bee bush"
on another page, whose URL I unfortunately did not copy, which refers to
"Pink bee bush" as "Cleome serrulata, also known as the Rocky Mountain bee
plant, bee flower, or spider flower."
Whew...just goes to show that people everywhere pay a lot of attention to
bees and the plants they like! I am sure there are more "bee bushes" out
there, too...
Katherine Waser
