Peppermint

Family

Lamiaceae

Habit

perennial

Height

0.9 m

Spread

0.2 m

Growth

very fast

Lifespan

5 years

First yield

after 1 year

Hardiness

zone 3–10

Shade tolerance

light shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam, Clay

Soil moisture

semi-dry – very wet

pH

6 – 7

Synonyms

M. aquatica citrata, M. citrata

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: Leaves can be consumed raw or cooked to add flavor to salads or dishes. True Eau de Cologne mint has a strong taste, while the 'Basil' variety is a suitable alternative to basil in pesto due to its excellent flavor. The leaves, whether fresh or dried, are also suitable for brewing herbal tea.

Medicinal: The plant's root is utilized for treating rheumatism and cancer, while the whole plant is used for alleviating skin allergies and in cancer therapy.

Other uses: Lavender oil, extracted from the entire plant, is utilized in perfumes, oral care items, and personal care products. Historically, lavender served as a natural insect and rodent repellent, particularly in granaries due to rodents' aversion to mint scent.

An easily cultivated plant that grows well in various soils and conditions, except very dry soil. It does particularly well in heavy clay soil and prefers a sunny location for optimal essential oil production, although it can also thrive in partial shade. It prefers slightly acidic soil and can withstand neglect, even growing well in tall grass. This plant readily hybridizes with other genus members. Its flowers are highly attractive to bees and butterflies, making it a beneficial companion plant for cabbage and tomatoes to deter insects. To prevent its aggressive spread, mint is best grown in containers alongside other plants. The entire plant emits a strong minty scent with a hint of ginger. Better quality essential oil is produced when the plant is grown in dry soil. Plants in this genus are seldom or never targeted by deer.

Peppermint is sterile and sets no viable seed — sowing is out, and anything sold as mint seed will give other species or random crosses. Propagation is entirely vegetative, and it could hardly be easier: the plant throws out numerous runners above and below ground, and virtually any piece carrying a node will take. In spring or autumn, cut off a length of rhizome and lay it shallowly in its new place; shoot-tip cuttings root in a glass of water within a fortnight. That vigour is precisely the catch: the runners thread through a bed quickly and crowd out neighbours. To keep the mint from travelling, grow it in a container, or in a bottomless pot standing ten centimetres proud of the soil.

Peppermint flowers from July to September, at a time when many spring nectar sources have long dried up. Its nectar value is high and its pollen value moderate; around 29 wild bee species visit it, from the violet carpenter bee through the buff-tailed bumblebee to the wool carder bee, none of them specialists. Five butterfly and moth species have been observed at the flowers, among them the gatekeeper, the sooty copper and the Jersey tiger. Being a sterile cross between water mint and spearmint, peppermint sets no seed and has no caterpillar fauna of its own. Anyone wanting to support insects should let part of the planting flower rather than cutting it continuously for harvest.

Special features: Perennial plant that forms roots, either in the ground or in pots. Avoid mixing with different herbs or types of mint. Peppermint produces more essential oil when exposed to increased sunlight and dry conditions. The hybrid variety is sterile and can be propagated by dividing the rhizome at any time.

A cultivated hybrid with no natural range; origin England, 1696. Peppermint is not a wild species but a chance cross between water mint (Mentha aquatica) and spearmint (Mentha spicata), found by John Ray in an English garden in 1696. Because one parent is itself a hybrid, the result is a sterile triple cross with no distribution area of its own — every stand today traces back to vegetative propagation. It is recorded in Germany from about 1780. Commercial growing now centres on Michigan and New York, Spain, the Balkans, South America and Asia; the German areas lie in the peatlands around Munich, especially near Eichenau, and in Franconia.

As a sterile garden hybrid, peppermint has no natural habitat. Where it occurs outside cultivation it is an escape, holding on purely by vegetative growth and usually staying near gardens or former growing ground. Such stands turn up on damp, nutrient-rich ruderal sites: ditch margins, path edges, streamsides and garden dumps. The places it picks reveal the demands of its parents, above all water mint — free-draining to humic, nutrient-rich, fresh soils in sun or partial shade. It avoids markedly dry ground, even though dryness is what raises the essential oil content. It forms no permanently established wild populations in Central Europe.