Peppermint, Spearmint and Water Mint…what’s the connection?
It’s a family connection! Peppermint is a result of Spearmint and Water Mint mixing their genes and giving rise to the more powerful Peppermint. You can see that in the botanical names – Spearmint is Mentha spicata (spicats means ‘spear” , Water Mint is Mentha aquatica (you can guess what ‘aquatica’ means). Peppermint drops the ‘aquatica’ (though it does well in water) and takes the name Mentha piperita × spicata (piperita means ‘pepper’. The x means it’s an hybrid or ‘crossed with’ another species – in this case it was another Mint, crossed with Spearmint.
Don’t panic if it’s confusing. Until the 1600s, it was thought that there was only one kind of Mint!
I’m going to be adding a page to our garden herbs section shortly where I delve into the herbal differences between the three. It’s too big for a single post!
To sum it up though, Peppermint is the Queen, having the strongest and more potent constituents and healing abilities. Spearmint is next and shares many of the same properties but in a milder form (making it better for children and the elderly or those with chronic, debilitating illnesses to start with). It’s a bit harder to define Water Mint clearly, though and I’m still working on that.
The Lamiaceae family of plants is huge and with a wide range of healing abilities for we ailing humans but the key throughout all of the members is their volatile (aka essential) oils.
We have our own Aussie aquatic mint too! It’s Mentha australis or River Mint. It has similar properties to other Mints but I’m still getting a handle on using it medicinally.
Other herb pages on Ligaya Garden
We cover a lot of ground on many herb related topics here on our website. There are whole pages devoted to different topics as well as frequent posts. Some of the links are –
