Yellow Giant Hyssop

Description

Agastache nepetoides, the yellow giant hyssop, is a perennial flower native to the United States and Canada. It is a member of the family Lamiaceae. It is listed as endangered in Connecticut, and as threatened in New York (state), Vermont, and Wisconsin. The Iroquois use a compound infusion of plants as a wash for poison ivy and itch. Agastache is a genus of aromatic flowering herbaceous perennial plants in the family Lamiaceae. It contains 22 species, mainly native to North America, one species native to eastern Asia. The common names of the species are a variety of fairly ambiguous and confusing "hyssops" and "mints"; as a whole the genus is known as giant hyssops or hummingbird mints. Most species are very upright, 0.5-3 m tall, with stiff, angular stems clothed in toothed-edged, lance shaped leaves ranging from 1-15 cm long and 0.5-11 cm broad depending on the species. Upright spikes of tubular, two-lipped flowers develop at the stem tips in summer. The flowers are usually white, pink, mauve, or purple, with the bracts that back the flowers being of the same or a slightly contrasting color. Agastache derives from the Ancient Greek words ἄγαν (ágan) "very much" and στάχυς (stákhus) "ear of grain", describing the flower spikes. The genus was established in 1762 by Jan Frederik Gronovius in the second edition of his controversial Flora Virginica, based on the specimens and notes of John Clayton. It is a member of subfamily Nepetoideae, which contains a large proportion of the world's aromatic culinary herbs. Within its subfamily, it belongs to the mint tribe (Mentheae), and therein to the catmint subtribe (Nepetinae). The Nepetinae are robustly supported by cladistic analyses of morphological and DNA sequence data, and were recognized as early as the mid-late 19th century. The closest living relatives of Agastache are believed to be two very different lineages: One is a group of mostly Asian and usually strongly aromatic and rather robust plants, which contains the typical dragonheads (Dracocephalum), true hyssops (Hyssopus), West Asian dragonheads (Lallemantia), and Japanese catnip (Schizonepeta).