Plant · P-590

Spearmint

Mentha spicata

Spearmint is a fast-spreading perennial grown for its clean-flavored leaf, eaten fresh in salads and mint sauce or brewed as a tea, and distilled for the oil that flavors gum, candy and toothpaste worldwide. It handles a hot, humid summer well enough to be grown as a commercial field crop, needing only steady moisture and either full sun or partial shade to thrive. It runs hard by both rhizome and stolon and will colonize any damp ground left open to it, so it is usually grown behind a sunk barrier or in a bottomless container rather than left to roam - that same vigor makes it effectively free ground cover and propagation. Only the concentrated essential oil is a concern in pregnancy; ordinary culinary use of the leaf is not.