It is one of the favored plants of honeybees in early spring in the southwest deserts of North America.

The flowers are profuse along the main stem and side branches and is an aromatic attractor of the honeybee and other species.

[3] It is evergreen or cold deciduous, depending on location.Hyptis was demonstrated to be polyphyletic on the basis of evidence from nuclear and plastid DNA.

[1] It occurs mostly in areas with a water source; in the southwestern US deserts it is commonly in the dry washes, intermixed with other species.

In the "creosote bush scrub" Yuma Desert-(western Sonoran Desert) of southwest Arizona, it is found with the palo verde, Bebbia, Encelia farinosa, desert ironwood (Olneya tesota), Lycium andersonii (wolfberry or Anderson thornbush), Psorothamnus spinosus (a type of smoke tree), and Acacia greggii, as some common associated species of the washes, elevation dependent.