Species of flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae
You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in Italian. (September 2021)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Italian article.
Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing Italian Wikipedia article at [[:it:Mentha longifolia]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template{{Translated|it|Mentha longifolia}} to thetalk page.
You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (September 2021)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Rossminze]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template{{Translated|de|Rossminze}} to thetalk page.
Mentha longifolia, also known ashorse mint,[1]brookmint,[2]fillymint orSt. John's horsemint, is a species of plant in the family Lamiaceae. It is native to Europe excluding Britain and Ireland,[3] western and central Asia (east to Nepal and far western China), and northern and southern (but not tropical) Africa.[4][5][6]
It is a very variableherbaceousperennial plant with apeppermint-scented aroma. Like many mints, it has a creepingrhizome, with erect to creeping stems 40–120 cm tall. Theleaves 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. Theflowers 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 spreads via rhizomes to formclonal colonies.[6][7][8]
Mentha longifolia has been widely confused with tomentose variant plants of the speciesMentha spicata; it can be distinguished from these by the hairs being simple and unbranched, in contrast to the branched hairs ofM. spicata.[7]
Nicholas Culpeper'sComplete Herbal (1653) states that "It is good for wind andcolic in the stomach ... The juice, laid on warm, helps theKing's evil or kernels in the throat ... The decoction or distilled water helps a stinking breath, proceeding from corruption of the teeth, and snuffed up the nose, purges the head. It helps the scurf or dandruff of the head used with vinegar."[11] In addition,Mentha longifolia, like other Mentha species, is known to have important medicinal properties.[12]
^Grieve, Maud (1971).A Modern Herbal: The Medicinal, Culinary, Cosmetic and Economic Properties, Cultivation and Folk-lore of Herbs, Grasses, Fungi, Shrubs, & Trees with All Their Modern Scientific Uses, Volume 2.
