Grave Matters: The Best Friend - Mark Branaman

Mark Branaman Memorial Service
19 May 2017
Brian Hoffman

If you examined the trajectory of your life, I doubt that you would think that we would be here, at this time, for Mark.  In fact, I thought that in the end, Mark would be here for Rodney or Branton as the last man standing.  But death is no respecter of plans or schedules.  In fact, it’s darned inconvenient.  It’s a tribute to Mark, his family and his family of friends that you are all here today.  If everyone who wanted to be here, but were unable to do so, showed up, we’d not have enough space here.

So where do you begin?  How do you sum up Mark in a few minutes?  I’m told that we are supposed to be done by 6.  So here goes.

Throughout my adult life, I have heard how rare it is for men to form long-term friendships,especially with other men.  You couldn’t prove it by me.  I met Mark in August of 1977 in 8^th grade Spanish class.  I was the new kid, serious about school, trying to really learn Spanish.  Mark was trying out being the class clown, probably being the only time he really acted out in school.  I still laugh when I think about Mark smart-alecking Se̴ñora Hurst and ending up doing time in the puppet theatre.  When he still caused problems, she pushed a couple of books in on him.  I can still hear “Ouch!”  When he found out that I was interested in running (we had a cross-country and track team in 7^th grade in Minnesota), he told me “My brother Robbie is a runner at Central and he could beat you any time!” – he loved and respected his big brother.  Outwardly, I was cool.  Inside, I thought “Well yeah, I can run forever, but not very quickly”.  I thought that this kid would never like me.

That was the only class we were in together.  

We bonded entirely through running, which might interest people who don’t think that sports in high school are important.  We ran summer track together, then cross-country, snowman/polar bear club and track.  After running literally thousands of miles together, you learn a few things about a guy – and it was all good.  As teammates, we became inseparable.  We ran the railroad tracks out to Missouri Western (and back) together.  We ran in the same training groups and pushed (or pulled) each other to become better runners.  When we were in a race, if one passed the other we gave a pat and said “Let’s go!”  More than anyone else that I have known, Mark could find joy in the success of others.  If he beat you, and you did well, that meant that he had done that much better.  If you beat him, had a good race and he was close, that meant that he had done well, also.  Our high-school cross-country team didn’t have a real standout runner. But we had a lot of really good runners.  We found that the more runners we could stack together, the more races, trophies and medals we would win – and Mark was the cheerleader that made us all believe it.

Before I knew it, or knew how it happened, we added friends from across every socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and academic level.  Stonecrest, South Park, Midtown, Deer Park, Hillcrest…all running together (literally and figuratively).  We had known of Rodney Pixler in middle school, but really got to know him in track.  We picked up Danny Butterfield along the way.  Those guys form the core group that I really hang with from high school.  We split up in college – all of the other guys went to SMS and I went to Park College, but we stayed in touch and come summer, we were running together again.  The SMS cross-country and track guys became my friends as well.

Mark was my best friend.  That is not a unique claim.  He was Rodney’s best friend.  He was Danny’s best friend.  I am sure that many of you out there will stand and say, “Mark was my best friend”.  One of the amazing things about Mark was his capacity to love and be everyone’s best friend.  When I look across this room at the people I know and those that I don’t but may have heard of, the one thing we have in common is Mark.  That man is the glue that bonds all of us, and made sure that we met up and enjoyed good times together.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  I hate running.  Running is uncomfortable.  Running hurts.  Why do I run?  Because it was the only sport that I was any good at.  Because it is the only exercise that keeps any kind of weight off me.  But mostly because of the guys.  I so look forward to the weekends running with Mark, Rodney and Branton and the times we have had at races, that the pain is worth it.  That is what has always made running worth it.  The racing, the achieving together, the pizza, pinball, video game arcades, baseball games, the music, the beer.  The being together.  We are training for a 10 mile race at Garden of the Gods in Colorado next month.  Mark was really looking forward to the trip and was the last thing we talked about.  It is going to be strange to toe the line without him.

At first glance, you may not have thought of Mark as a great athlete.  He was always a bit bigger (not necessarily taller) than most of us.  Coach Chavez called him Tank because of his size.  In college, he became “Barney” (as in Rubble).  First a baseball player, then a runner, he was a fierce competitor.  That was a contradiction, because he never seemed to take the competition too seriously.  But once locked in, he was nails.  When the stakes were highest, he ran his best.  He usually moved up one or two positions (six our sophomore year) on the cross-country team in the last three races of the season, when we needed it the most.   I haven’t seen many with his tolerance for pain.  I can still see him blond-haired, red-faced, breathing hard and spraying sweat with every step on his way to an All-State finish at the 1981 State Cross-Country Championships and our then school high 4^th place finish.  It was his signature look.  He was not the fastest short distance runner, but his grit kept him on the 4x800 meter relay team that became district champions in 1982.  We stood on the podium together often and it was always my honor.

If you knew Mark, you’d know that he valued family above all.  He came by it honestly.  Dean, Ruth, Rob and Mark took in countless young men and gave them wonderful models of unconditional love.  The Branaman house on Monterey in St. Joseph was runner central.  My own parents were not able to attend more than a few meets, but Ruth and Dean were always there.  They welcomed us into their lives, treated us like their own, and treated us like adults.  More than one person will tell you that they know what a great family is from knowing the Branamans.  I learned that your family was not defined by birth, but could be formed by choice.

My advice to young men is to find a woman that is out of your league, get her to like you and convince her to marry you – before she finds out what a horrible mistake that she has made.  Mark took that advice well.  He met Stacey at college in 1982.  He told me about this beautiful, wonderful woman he met and I HAD to meet her.  Stacey was absolutely the love of Mark’s life.  She is the only woman that I knew him to try much to better himself for and really find out what she liked and find out as much as he could about that stuff and experience it.  They were peas in a pod, through good times and bad.  Their nearly 30 year marriage is a testament to their love (and her patience).  Her friends became his friends and many of them became my friends.

The thing that people remember most about Mark is his fun-loving nature.  It was his most endearing quality and perhaps his biggest shortcoming.  Anything fun that was worth doing was worth overdoing, and that sometimes landed us in trouble.  Mark got me thrown out of a bar – twice.  I earned my way out once, pouring a pitcher of beer on a bouncer’s feet.  I like to think that we were balancing influences on each other – my uptightness tempered by and tempering his outgoing personality.  Stacey provided balance to Mark, as well, providing him the greatest reason to reign in that impulsiveness.  Mark was a great person.  Stacey made him want to be better.

Mark was born to be a Dad and he and Stacey had to overcome tremendous obstacles to have Dean. We shared that joy as we and the Pixler’s also had sons within the span of six weeks.  Dean soon became the focal point of their family.  Mark and Stacey encouraged him to find himself and became involved in his interests.  Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, band….everything.  Mark and Stacey spent the time driving, going to meetings, camping, hiking and sent Dean on the path to become the stellar man that he is today.

How many of you ever did something that you thought you wouldn’t – go to a concert, go on a hike, camp, run, go to a ballgame – because of Mark’s invitation?  How many of you saw Mark do something that you never thought he’d be interested in?  How many times were there people there that Mark knew that became your friend, as well?  That was how Mark showed love.  He involved you in his life and he in yours.  If he loved you and you had an interest, he spent time to learn about that interest and enjoy it.

So many things to say and so little time to say it.  In thinking of this, I tried to think of things like “What were Mark’s hobbies” and “What did Mark collect?”.  You know what Mark collected?  He collected friends and family.  He would go out of his way to be there for anyone he considered family.  That is why this is so hard.  Do you cry because Mark is gone?  I sure do.  Do you feel an emptiness?  Yep.  That is a good thing.  The amount of pain you feel is directly related to how much love you shared with him. Good times, bad times, victories, losses, successes, failures, headaches and heartbreaks.  As time goes by, the sharpness will diminish.  You will laugh and have good times.  That is good, too.  That means that the void left in our lives is being filled back up by memories of the times that we have shared together.  Mark would appreciate that.  We may never feel whole again, but we are better for having known Mark.

Do you have a favorite memory of Mark? I encourage you to write them down on paper and send them to Stacey, Dean, Ruth or Robbie,  or post them on Facebook so that they can be shared. Each of us knew a slightly different Mark.   I have hours of material that I had to trim down.  Mark always made fun of how long I could talk,  so I’m going to wrap this up, leaving too much unsaid.

One of Mark’s biggest desires was to be remembered as a good man.  You succeeded my brother by choice.  While too short, yours was a life well-lived.  I will love you forever.  Take heart my friends, Mark will always be a part of you.  May the same be said of us when life goes on in our absence.

Humpin' it up Big Momma!

Mark Branaman Obituary

I've got a crush on you...

Sharks are an incredibly diverse group of fish.  Most live in the ocean, some live in freshwater, and some move back a forth between both.  "Jaws" perpetuated the image of the shark as an ambush predator, tearing big pieces out of large prey and chewing it up.  Many sharks do eat like this, but more of them swim up onto a school of fish, open their mouths and swallow whatever goes in whole.  Some strain algae and other plankton out of the water, while others eat hard shelled critters like mussels, clams, lobsters, crabs...etc.

The Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway was inhabited by many different kinds of shark.  One of the most peculiar was the durophagous (eats hard-shelled animals) shark Ptychodus.  These sharks had jaws with robust teeth with low roots and massive crowns that could apply three point forces to hard material to break it.  The crowns have transverse ridges and the margin of the crowns are decorated with a number of ridges and bumps (tubercles).  Their mouths were filled with pavement dentitions composed of hundreds of teeth.  Collections of these teeth is seen at right and below (pictures by Mike Everhart).  Note the flattened surfaces caused by wear of the teeth from grinding hard materials.

Although teeth from these sharks are relatively common in the Cretaceous Greenhorn and Niobrara Formations of Kansas, little is truly known about the shark.  It is estimated some species of this shark were up to 11 meters in length.  Since there was abundant hard-shelled prey and little competition, this is entirely possible.  Included in this diet were likely mollusks such as these small inoceramid clams (left).  Nautiloids (think squid with shells) and small fish would have also been important food sources.  The general body shape has been inferred to be fusiform, since the vertebral centra are round.  The fact that these centra are calcified suggest that these are modern sharks (neoselachians).  The only semi-well known skeletal elements of these sharks are the jaws.  No well articulated skeleton of Ptychodus has ever been found, so all attempts at classification of this fish are based on circumstantial evidence.

While I was examining the enameloid of teeth of a 305 million year old shark that I had collected from the Farley Limestone as Park University, I decided that I should examine the enameloid of a more recent shark to understand the difference between primitive and modern sharks.  I did a couple of quick surface digests of Ptychodus teeth with 10% HCl.  After 30 seconds, I was able to see the single crystallite enameloid (SCE) on the surface (figure at right: Panels 1,3, 5 are before digestion and 2, 4, 6 are of single crystallites).  After 3 minutes, I could easily see parallel-bundled enameloid (PBE) crystals on the surface (figure below).  After a couple of days sectioning a tooth, I could see a triple-layered enameloid.  A pretty good week's work I thought.  Then I made the mistake of searching the literature for what was known about Ptychodus tooth ultrastructure.  Turns out, the answer is very little.  But what is accepted says that these teeth do not exhibit a triple-layered enameloid, but rather an SCE.  Based on this observation and ignoring a lot of other evidence, the experts placed this shark among the hybodonts, an ancestral group of modern sharks.

I puzzled over this for quite a while, because my results had seemed so clear-cut.  I repeated these observations on several teeth and in several planes of section, but kept coming up with the same result:  the enameloid of these teeth had a triple-layered structure.  There was a superficial SCE/SLE, PBE on the crown, especially at the level of the transverse ridge, and tangled-bundled enameloid (TBE) next to the dentine.  More careful examination of the literature revealed a couple of other studies that documented a triple-layered enameloid in Ptychodus.  One of the reports was in an obscure journal and the Ptychodus teeth were a side study and only shown in a couple of pictures.  The other report was a Masters thesis which was unpublished.  What had started as an attempt to gain a proper control for one study turned into the main focus of another.  I would have to prove that what I was seeing was a real phenomenon.

The figure at the right shows the PBE adjoining the TBE, and the TBE next to the dentine in sectioned teeth.  Getting just the right images with the correct brightness and contrast took about 6 months.  The enameloid of Ptychodus had a lot of similarities to that of Squalicorax curvatus, including having a TBE that became single crystallite in structure at the enameloid-dentine junction.  Dentinal tubules rise high into the crown, penetrating into the enameloid, much like those seen earlier in my post on the hybodontiform shark.  Preservation of the teeth is amazing and casts of the odontoblasts (tooth-building cells) can be seen below.

The figure at right is my recreation of the one experiment that is cited the most often.  A whole Ptychodus tooth (1, 2, 3 below) was soaked in 10% HCl for 23 minutes, 35 seconds (4, 5, 6) it is easy to see the great degree of erosion in the surface decoration of the tooth.  In 7 and 8 you can see that the enameloid has been eroded to the level of the dentinal tubules, which show up as divots in the surface of the tooth.  The enameloid in this area (9) is single crystallite enameloid in appearance.  The previous studies are correct in interpretation of the results of the experience.  The problem is in the preparation.  The tooth was soaked in acid way too long, and the bundled enameloid layers were destroyed.

This study solidified (for me, at least) the idea that "If it isn't published, it isn't known.  If it is published, ask if it is truly good science in technique and interpretation."  The work done here shows that Ptychodus is not a hybodont (primitive shark or proto-shark), but rather is a selachimorph neoselachian fish (modern shark).  Reviews of the work have been very positive and the paper is cited in the second edition of "Oceans of Kansas" by Mike Everhart, which should be published this Fall.

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear...

In the last post, I talked about the triple-layer enameloid that is one of the defining characteristics of a modern shark.  That enameloid has an outer single crystallite enameloid/shiny-layered enameloid (SCE/SLE) that resists the spread of cracks in the teeth; a middle parallel-bundled enameloid (PBE) that resists compressional (straight down) force; and an inner tangled-bundled enameloid (TBE) that resists rotational (twisting) forces.  These are tremendous properties for a shark that bites big chunks out of something else and needs to chew them up.  A Cretaceous predator, Squalicorax curvatus from the Western Interior Seaway of Kansas (about 90 million years ago), has teeth that everyone would recognize as shark's teeth.  Squalicorax has a labiolingually compressed (flat) shape, with a strong triangular cusp and a shoulder with serrated edges (like a steak knife).  These teeth are perfect for running up on something even bigger than the shark, slicing out a chunk of prey and chewing it up.

Squalicorax curvatus teeth coated with ammonium chloride to show detail

Squalicorax curvatus would be very recognizable to the casual observer as a shark.  It just LOOKS like a shark.  Mouth behind and below snout, large dorsal fin, fusiform body, mouth full of nasty teeth and big (up to about 10 feet long).  A few extremely well preserved specimens have been found, including a nearly complete skeleton (very rare for cartilage - even calcified cartilage) recently sold by PaleoSearch, Inc. in Hays, KS from the Smoky Hill Chalk of Kansas (about 85 million years ago).

Reconstruction of Squalicorax curvatus  by Dmitry Bogdanov

Exceptional Squalicorax skeleton - absolute once-in-a-lifetime find

Squalicorax skull detail

Squalicorax curvatus SLE and PBE - surface etch.  Size bars: (1,2,6)
1 micron, (3) 100 microns, (4) 50 microns, (5) 5 microns.

There is no argument in the literature that this particular shark is a selachimorph neoselachian (read SHARK).  The external anatomy of Squalicorax curvatus teeth was examined first using teeth that had not been exposed to 10% hydrochloric acid (HCl) (panel 1), treated with HCl for 30 seconds (panel 2) or 3 minutes (panel 3-6).  There is not much relief on the surface of the untreated teeth, but you can easily see randomly oriented enameloid crystallites on the surface of a tooth treated for 30 seconds with 10% HCl.  Longer treatments remove all of this SCE/SLE from the surface and expose the parallel bundled enameloid of the Squalicorax tooth.  Panel three shows the parallel bundles at the level of the serrations in the tooth.  As the parallel bundles approach the serration, they turn direction, so that they point towards the edge of the serration, instead of towards the apex of the tooth.  As you zoom in on the parallel bundles, it is possible to see that there are two populations of bundles; one that runs parallel to the long axis of the tooth, and one that runs perpendicular to the long axis.

Cross section of Squalicorax teeth.  Size bars: (1) 500 microns,
(2,3,6) 50 microns, (4) 20 microns, (5) 5 microns

It is possible to see all three enameloid layers simultaneously in sectioned teeth.  In panel 1, the lighter area is the enameloid and the darker area inside is the dentine of the tooth.  The tooth is embedded in plastic.  In the upper right and lower left of the picture, you can see the serrations (cutting edges) of the teeth.  In panel 2, we are looking at the interface between the enameloid upper right and the dentine (left).  The arrows show where the dentine and enameloid meet.  The TBE (T) is seen next to the dentine (left) in panel 3, and the PBE (P) is to the right.  Panels 4-5 show the interface between the TBE and dentine.  As the dentine is approached, the enameloid becomes more like an SCE/SLE.  The dentine has a structure that looks a lot like bone, with channels for odontoblasts that are surrounded by concentric rings of dentinal material.  Shark teeth have not changed a whole lot in appearance in the past 90 million years.  There are small changes, but those mostly reflect stress introduced onto the tooth what the shark eats.

Almost to the pay-off for the paper.....

Is you is or is you ain't my sharky?

Life was going swell, then work showed up and shot everything to hell.  My writing got in the way of my writing anyway.  So this is what I have been doing instead of writing blog entries.  One line of my research is examining the value of tooth enameloid characteristics in sharks as a way of determining whether they are a "shark ancestor/primitive shark" or a "modern shark".  "Sharks" are generally thought of as fish with a skeleton made out of cartilage (chondrichthyan), a mess of teeth in the mouth that are replaced over time, tooth like scales (denticles) in their skin, and a torpedo- shaped (fusiform) body.  As such, shark remains can be identified from the Devonian Period, over 400 million years ago.

1) Enameloid layers in shark teeth; 2) possible directions of
parallel bundles; 3) sectioning directions of teeth

Shark biologists spend a bit of time arguing about what characteristics make a chondrichthyan a modern shark or a shark ancestor.  The one telling characteristic of the teeth seems to be the structure of the tooth enameloid.  A shark's tooth has a core of dentine, surrounded by fluoroapatite crystals.  Primitive sharks such as the ctenacanths, symmoriids and hybodonts had a single-layered enameloid composed of randomly oriented single crystals of fluroapatite (single crystallite enameloid - SCE).  A modern shark (selachimorph) has a triple-layered enameloid, with an outer layer of SCE (called shiny layered enameloid - SLE) plus two underlying layers of bundled crystals.  The middle layer is composed of bundles arranged in parallel (parallel bundeled enameloid - PBE), while the inner layer next to the dentine is composed of interwoven bundles (tangled-bundled enameloid - TBE).

Looking at these enameloid crystals takes some doing, since they are held in place with smaller "cement" molecules.  Fortunately the enameloid crystals are more acid resistant than are the cement molecules, so 5 sec to 3 minutes exposure of fossil shark teeth to 10% hydrochloric acid is usually enough to see the enameloid, depending on what layer you want to look at, and how you have prepared the teeth.   With whole teeth, 15-30 seconds is enough to see the randomly oriented crystals of the SCE/SLE; while seeing the PBE may take 1-3 minutes.  You can see all of the layers at once if you cut the tooth open (or embed it in plastic and sand it down) and then treat with acid for about 5 seconds.

Gold coated Ptychodus tooth, about 1 cm across

Enameloid crystals are really small, so you have to use a very powerful microscope to see them.  A regular light microscope will usually allow for a 1000X magnification, but you need to magnify these teeth about 5000X to see the individual crystallites of the SCE/SLE well at all.  This requires the use of an electron microscope, which uses a beam of electrons in a vacuum to image a specimen instead of light.  Most biomaterials are natural insulators, which means that they will absorb electrons and not reflect or re-emit them.  To solve this problem, we coat the specimen with a one atom thick layer of gold.  These sharks are all pimped out.  The gold will allow us to see the shape of the surface they are deposited on by reflecting electrons (backscatter) or by absorbing an electron and emitting one in its place (secondary electrons).

Tooth embedded in plastic, ground sandpaper, and coated in gold.
Copper tape is used as a pointer

The Hybodont Tooth

One group of primitive sharks that are seen as being ancestral to the modern shark are the hybodonts.  The first record of hybodontiform sharks is seen in the Mississippian of the Carboniferous Period, about 340 million years old.  The hybodonts were very successful, surviving late into the Cretaceous Period.  This is an evolutionary life of about 270 million years.  Remember that dinosaurs went extinct only 67 million years ago.  The hybodonts had mouths that were not overhung by their noses (rostrum), large cranial scales, barbed spines in front of their dorsal fins, a variety of different denticle types, and SCE on their teeth.

Reconstruction of Onychoselache

One of the early hybodontiforms was Onychoselache.  They were very small, about 10 inches long with teeth that were about 1 mm in maximum dimension.  Their teeth had low, flat crowns for crushing hard shelled organisms.  They had barbed dorsal fin spines, oval hooked denticles on their pectoral fins, and c-shaped denticles along their lateral line (sensory region on flanks of fish).  I have found very similar remains from the 307 million year old Farley Limestone of the Kansas City Group.

Hybodontiform parts:  scale bars(1-5) 1 mm, (6-9) 0.5 mm,
(10-11) 0.2 mm

The remains at the right are from an indeterminate hybodontiform.  There is not adequate material to describe a fish, and while the remains are associated, they are separate bits and pieces.  This is just not enough material to describe an organism down to the species level.  Views 1-5 are various views of a tooth: 1-top (occlusal) view; 2-front (labial); 3-side (lateral); 4-broken side (medial); 5-back (lingual) views.  View 6 is a piece of dorsal fin spine with hooked denticles on the posterior (back) side.  Views 7-9 are denticles from the pectoral (front) fins and 10-11 are denticles from the lateral line.  I sectioned several pieces of these teeth and looked at the structure to make sure that they were really hybodontifom and had an SCE.

Sectioned hybodontiform teeth:  Scale bars: (1)  200 microns;
(2) 10 microns ; (3,4,6) 1 micron; (5) 50 microns

The tooth crown is composed of dentine, which extends in columns up into the enameloid.  In the electron micrographs at left, the dentine is dark and the enameloid is light colored.  In panel 1 you can see columns of dentine approaching the surface of the tooth.  The enameloid has several channels for conducting odontoblast (tooth-building cells) processes through the enameloid (panel 2).  In panels 3-4, randomly distributed enameloid crystals make up the outer layer of the tooth.  Dentinal tubules are seen in section in panel 5.  The junction (arrows) between the dentine (D) and enameloid (E) is seen in panel 6.  The SCE is clearly visible in this section as well.  A channel carrying an arm of an odontoblast cell can be seen between the left two arrows.

That is about 3 months worth of work to get everything done just right.  Next is the last two years of my research life.




Reconstruction by Kahless28

Bodacious Botanicals: Dotted Horsemint

Having studied biology on some level for more than 40 years, I have seen a wide variety of living organisms.  One of the most striking plants that I have seen is the Dotted Horsemint (Monarda punctata).  It grows to about three feet tall, with clusters of yellow tubular flowers with purple spots on the upper leaf axils.  The bracts (leaves near the flowers) turn white to lilac in color.  The stems are square, a hallmark of the mint family.  The leaves are spearhead shaped (lanceolate) to narrowly oblong and have hairs.  This plant grows in sandy soils from Vermont to southeastern Minnesota and down to Florida and Texas.  Interestingly, the dotted horsemint is missing from the Ohio River drainage.  Horsemint tends to grow in colonies, so if you find one plant, you will likely find others.

Also known as the spotted horsemint or spotted bee balm, the decorative flowers work well in butterfly gardens.  They bloom for a long time, and have showy foliage from July - October.  Pollinators include bumblebees, honeybees, plasterer bees, miner bees, wasps, swallowtail butterflies and the Karner blue butterfly.  Hummingbirds are attracted to the aromatic blossoms, as well.

Dotted horsemint has found many uses by humans through the years.  Being a member of the mint family, it produces several fragrant oils, and the Navajo used them to freshen the air in their hogans.  The plant has been used by several American Indian tribes as a medicine.  It has been used by tribes as diverse as the Meskwaki (Fox), Mohegan, Blackfoot and Nanticoke in teas and powders to relieve stomach cramps, cold, fever and flu.  Poultices on wounds can be used as an antiseptic. 

The plant produces a high content of thymol, which has known medicinal qualities.  Several mints are known to settle a queasy stomach when brewed into a tea.  Thymol can also be used to remove worms from the digestive tract, has antibacterial and antifungal properties.  Thymol has also been used as a miticide and fungicide in beehives.  It shows promise as a way of treating bacteria while reducing the incidence of antimicrobial resistance when used in tandem with antibiotics or antifungals.  Thymol also acts as a depressant through GABA-receptors, which explains some of the calming effects of herbal teas containing mints. 

This nice stand of horsemint was along the nature trail at Illiniwek Village State Historic Site in Clark County, Missouri.  This site contains the only known Illinois Indian village in Missouri.  Although the plant has a wide distribution, the first time I saw it was about 3 years ago on vacation with Nadienne. If you garden with native perennials east of the Rocky Mountains, this would be a showy addition to your collection.