I searched the forum for this subject, and didn't find anything about it. And now I have a little Dracocephalum moldavica plant of my own. (I am going to put mine in a pot when this current storm is over)
So I decided to make a post! Here I am not being shy. yay!
Does anyone have any experience with a plant called "Maldivian Balm - Dragonhead Flower" ? Its official name is Dracocephalum moldavica .
(What follows is MY experience with this thing peppered with a lot of personal story telling, hah)
It apparently hails/originates from/in Eurasia/Asia. It can be used in place of other lemony balms (allegedly it tastes better dried than some balms?) my understanding is that you can eat the flowers and the leaves. It's regarded as a plant for making tea but people use it to season other things too.
I got one yesterday! it is in a small cup & organic ^_^. It looks plainly bizarre to me. Before I saw it for sale I had never seen it before. It didn't look terribly vigorous, but I have noticed this particular nursery sends their plants out tiny. They grow up and start producing nicely -
that being said, at first I left the maldivian balm / Dracocephalum moldavica where I found it on the account I didn't know heads or tails or tales about it
I went home to research it where I learned it was supposed to be one of those huge lemon burst things (hahaha the plants that aren't lemons but have that giant lemony blast in them anyway? they are awesome, I am just discovering those - the only other lemon thing I have is lemon thyme - I swear it'll make ya pucker!)
after reading it was supposed to be a lemon blaster thing lemon blastier than some other lemon things routinely used in tea
the description everywhere was all "use it to make tea tea tea"
& I was like "I don't mind if I do"
My DH overheard me desiring the "Draco-Phalu-Maldivica" (hah)
& actually offered to drive me back to the store to get the plant.
It happened to be in a rain storm & as I mentioned before, the nursery selling those exotic plants likes to send them out pretty tiny and charge relatively high (I daresay I am also a "frugal franny" - hah)
the plants had been knocked around pretty hard from being outside on display and I almost couldn't want some unknown thing I had never heard of that looked killed by the wind, but
I remembered some description of the crushed leaves I had read !
that had inspired me deeply (hah)
so I found a super small leaf that was already ripped
(I do love this organic nursery, haha, but the cups they use for their seedlings have eerily sharp edges that SLICE downward facing leaves, oops! so there were broken leaves on the level of the cups everywhere o.O)
I felt a little guilty about crushing a leaf (oooh I guess I don't know nursery etiquette to know if it is okay to crush a tiny leaf to smell what it actually IS? crushing that one piece made the sale)
in any event, after I crushed that one tiny leaf <3
I was greeted with a TRULY lemony blast, haha
(I haven't researched which chemicals make that particular lemonesqueness though- !)
I certainly won't be taking any leaves from my own plant until it's well established - but we shall see!
(I shall see!? hah, and I reckon I'd like to document it here to you !)
I look forward to tea!
P.S. I would post a picture now but my phone is clogged with pictures & I can't take any more I've been meaning to fix it but am a master procrastinator.
