Plant · P-591

Peppermint

Mentha piperita

Peppermint is a fast-spreading perennial and one of the most useful herbal remedies in the mint family, its leaf and flowering shoot brewed for fevers, headaches, digestive upset and irritable bowel symptoms, alongside everyday use as a flavoring in tea, sweets and gum. In hot, humid summers it wants water rather than shade - it is grown as a commercial field crop with regular irrigation and mulch, though a little shade helps where it gets truly dry. It runs by rhizome and colonizes any damp open ground its roots reach, establishing from fragments as small as an inch, so it is normally kept behind a sunk barrier or hard edge rather than planted loose among other beds. Only the concentrated essential oil is a concern in pregnancy or at high dose; ordinary culinary use of the leaf is not.