Mint
Halq’emeylem Name
Currently unknown
Latin Name
Mentha spicata L
Pronunciation
About Mint
There are many varieties of mint. In our garden we have peppermint, an aromatic herb originating in Europe. The aromatic leaves have a sweetish, cooling after taste. Peppermint contains a fixed oil, volatile oil, resin, tannins, cellulose, pentosan, pigments and mineral elements. It is edible and has medicinal properties which are taken to remove nausea, sickness and vomiting. Peppermint oil has a refreshing flavour which is used in products such as soap, toothpaste, aftershaves and perfumes. RT
Connections
Shakespeare
Mints are among the flowers given out by Perdita, the lost child who is found, in The Winter’s Tale: “Here’s flowers for you;/Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram” (4.4). For more on Perdita, see Crown Imperial. In the Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s favourite poem, the Latin poet Ovid has Venus say that “Persephone of old was given grace/ to change a woman’s form to fragrant mint;/and shall I then be grudged the right to change/ my prince?” (10.732-34). Venus then sprinkles nectar on the body of her human beloved, Adonis, transforming him into an anemone (but see also Checkered Lily)
Armado is called a “mint” in Love’s Labours Lost (5.2). See Columbine for more on this.
Indigenous Knowledge
There is a mint variety native to Turtle Island, called “wild mint” or in Latin Mentha arvensis L. var. canadensis (L.) Kuntze, or Mentha canadensis. Mint has anti-inflammatory properties and many medicinal uses, for digestion, as an antiseptic, and more (Siyamiya). It has also be used to deodorize traps and houses, as an insect repellent, and to deter rats and mice (Siyamiya).
Gallery
References
Image by kokopopsdave | Anthony Cramp | yoppy | Robyn Jay
Integrated Taxonomic Information System. (n.d.). Mentha spicata L.. Retrieved from https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=32272#null
https://www.almanac.com/plant/mint
Ovid, Metamorphoses. Trans. A. D. Melville. Oxford World’s Classics (2008)
Siyamiya (Dianna N. Kay), “Medicinal Plants of the Fraser Valley in Your Back Yard.”