Melissa officinalisL.

lemon balm

WFO wfo-0000240053 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Melissa officinalis, photographed by Derek Winterburn
fig. a Derek Winterburn, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-03 / obs. 203024695
Melissa officinalis, photographed by Michael Warner
fig. b Michael Warner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204786404
Melissa officinalis, photographed by Jochen Essig
fig. c Jochen Essig, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202739779
Melissa officinalis, photographed by Steve Milsom
fig. d Steve Milsom, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199309294
Melissa officinalis, photographed by E. Borchert
fig. e E. Borchert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194788627
Melissa officinalis, photographed by Karen Fry
fig. f Karen Fry, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192390033
Melissa officinalis, photographed by Susan Marley
fig. g Susan Marley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191767040
Melissa officinalis, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. h Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 189645960

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 490 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 490 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 26 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Faucibarba officinalis (L.) Dulac
  • Melissa altissima Sm.
  • Melissa bicornis Klokov
  • Melissa cordifolia Pers.
  • Melissa corsica Benth.
  • Melissa foliosa Opiz ex Rchb.
  • Melissa graveolens Host
  • Melissa hirsuta Hornem.
  • Melissa inodora Bornm.
  • Melissa occidentalis Raf. ex Benth.
  • Melissa officinalis f. verticillata Bolzon
  • Melissa officinalis subsp. altissima (Sm.) Arcang.
  • Melissa officinalis subvar. altissima (Sm.) Nyman
  • Melissa officinalis var. altissima (Sm.) K.Koch
  • Melissa officinalis var. cordifolia (Pers.) K.Koch
  • Melissa officinalis var. foliosa Briq.
  • Melissa officinalis var. graveolens (Host) Nyman
  • Melissa officinalis var. hirsuta K.Koch
  • Melissa officinalis var. romana (Mill.) Woodv.
  • Melissa officinalis var. villosa Benth.
  • Melissa officinalis var. vulgaris Alef.
  • Melissa romana Mill.
  • Melissa taurica Benth.
  • Melissa vulgaris unranked variegata Abbey

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.