Agastache nepetoides

Agastache nepetoides

Nectary

Agastache nepetoides (common name: yellow giant hyssop)

With beauty only pollinators love, this robust plant will not be winning any ribbons soon. Discreet greenish-yellow flowers, packed closely on squarish terminal spikes, are short-lived but bloom a few at a time to last late into the season and sometimes up to the first frost. Toothed arrowhead-shaped leaves grow up to 5” long and lack the fragrance common with other mints but their bitterness deter deer. One of the top 20 plants for feeding pollinators in some regions, this flower is beloved by yellow-faced bees, sweat bees, and bumblebees alike, along with hungry butterflies. Due to habitat loss and exotic plant invasions, this mint is disappearing from the Northeast where it grew in the open woods and woodland edges.

The species name, nepetoides, refers to this plants visual likeness to the Nepeta genus.