Water Mint
Mentha aquatica
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Walk along a wet ditch in August and you will smell it before you see it.
An upright perennial of wet ground with square stems, toothed oval leaves often flushed purple, and dense rounded terminal heads of small lilac-pink flowers. The whole plant smells strongly and unmistakably of mint when crushed or trodden. Water mint grows along ditches, marsh, pond edges, wet meadows and burn sides throughout the Dumfries area.
Behaviour
The late flowering, from July into October, makes it one of the most valuable nectar plants of the year's end, drawing bees, hoverflies and butterflies in numbers when much else has finished. It spreads by runners both above and below ground and can form large single-clone stands. It is one of the parents of peppermint, a natural hybrid with spearmint.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Mints and deadnettles (Lamiaceae)
- Height
- 30–90 cm
- Status
- Native; common on wet ground
Photo by No machine-readable author provided, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons