Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Lamiales > Lamiaceae > Mentha > Mentha longifolia

Mentha longifolia (bush mint (spearmint); spearmint)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Mentha longifolia (Horse Mint; syn. M. spicata var. longifolia L., M. sylvestris L., M. tomentosa D'Urv, M. incana Willd.) is a species in the genus Mentha (mint) native to Europe, western and central Asia (east to Nepal and the far west of China), and northern and southern (but not tropical) Africa.It is a very variable herbaceous perennial plant with a peppermint-scented aroma. Like many mints, it has a creeping rhizome, with erect to creeping stems 40–120 cm tall. The leaves are oblong-elliptical to lanceolate, 5–10 cm long and 1.5–3 cm broad, thinly to densely tomentose, green to greyish-green above and white below. The flowers are 3–5 mm long, lilac, purplish, or white, produced in dense clusters (verticillasters) on tall, branched, tapering spikes; flowering in mid to late summer. It
View Wikipedia Record: Mentha longifolia

Infraspecies

Mentha longifolia capensis
Mentha longifolia longifolia (peppermint) (Attributes)
Mentha longifolia noeana
Mentha longifolia polyadenia
Mentha longifolia typhoides
Mentha longifolia var. amphilema
Mentha longifolia var. asiatica (mint) (Attributes)
Mentha longifolia var. austroafghanica
Mentha longifolia var. chlorodictya
Mentha longifolia var. kermamensis
Mentha longifolia var. kotschyana
Mentha longifolia var. muqarrabica
Mentha longifolia var. petiolata
Mentha longifolia var. schimperi
Mentha longifolia var. swatica
Mentha longifolia wissii

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-Low
Bee Flower Color [2]  Blue-Green
Flower Color [2]  Pink
Edible [3]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [3]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [3]  Although no records of toxicity have been seen for this species, large quantities of some members of this genus, especially when taken in the form of the extracted essential oil, can cause abortions so some caution is advised.
Lifespan [3]  Perennial
Pollinators [3]  Bees
Scent [3]  The whole plant has a strong spearmint smell.
Structure [5]  Herb
Usage [3]  An essential oil is obtained from the whole plant, the yield is about 4K of oil from 1 tonne of leaves; The oil is used commercially as a food flavouring and oral hygiene preparation; The plant repels insects and was formerly used as an strewing herb; Rats and mice intensely dislike the smell of mint. The plant was therefore used in homes as a strewing herb and has also been spread in granaries to keep the rodents off the grain;
Height [3]  24 inches (0.6 m)
Width [3]  39 inches (1 m)
Light Preference [4]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [4]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [4]  Rich
Soil Moisture [4]  Damp
View Plants For A Future Record : Mentha longifolia

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Predators

Providers

External References

USDA Plant Profile

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Arnold SEJ, Faruq S, Savolainen V, McOwan PW, Chittka L, 2010 FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14287.
♦ 3Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 4ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 5Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 6Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 7Ecology of Commanster
♦ 8Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 9Dupont YL, Hansen DM and Olesen JM (2003) Structure of a plant-flower-visitor network in the high-altitude sub-alpine desert of Tenerife, Canary Islands. Ecography 26:301-310
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0