Apple Mint: The Mild, Woolly Mint, Its Name Tangle, and the Compounds Behind Its Scent

Don’t expect much menthol from apple mint. In most of the oils analyzed, the main compound is piperitenone oxide,¹ and the flavor is mild and rounded, without the cold bite of peppermint. It’s the soft one of the family, with round, fuzzy leaves, and it gets used more in tea than in cooking.² It’s usually sold as Mentha suaveolens, though sources don’t agree on the botany. Pineapple mint, with its cream-edged leaves, is a variegated form of the same plant.

At a glance

What apple mint is

The RHS describes apple mint as a vigorous, rhizomatous perennial up to 90 cm tall. It has rounded, softly hairy, apple-scented leaves up to 4 cm long, and dense spikes of tiny pale purple flowers in late summer and early fall. Those hairs give it the name woolly mint. Božović and colleagues describe the leaves as hairy on top and often gray- or white-felted.

Pineapple mint is the variegated cultivar M. suaveolens ‘Variegata’, a smaller plant (up to 40 cm) with pale green leaves edged in cream. The RHS also lists it as variegated apple mint.

A naming tangle

Sources don’t agree on what “apple mint” is botanically:

The review itself flags one sample, from Córdoba, Argentina, as probably a hybrid and not true M. suaveolens.¹ Katzer and the RHS split on the scent, too. The RHS calls the leaves apple-scented, while Katzer finds apple mint very mild, slightly minty and not reminiscent of apples.⁴²

Flavor and aroma

Apple mint is soft and rounded. You get a mild mint note with a faintly sweet, fruity edge, without the cold bite of peppermint.

The compounds

Božović, Pirolli and Ragno’s 2015 review pulls together analyses of M. suaveolens oil from all over and sorts them into three broad profiles: one rich in pulegone, one rich in piperitenone oxide, and one with similar amounts of piperitenone oxide and piperitone oxide.¹ Samples vary a lot:

Source: Božović et al., Molecules 2015.¹ Each of these is a single sample, so don’t blend them into one “typical” figure. Taken together, they say apple mint usually smells of piperitenone oxide, not menthol or carvone, and that its chemistry really does shift from place to place.

Origin and history

Božović and colleagues give the native range as southern and western Europe, reaching north to the Netherlands. They note it’s grown as a pot herb and has gone wild in parts of northern and central Europe, usually along streams and in damp spots.¹ Kew’s range is Macaronesia and Europe to the Mediterranean, with introductions as far as North America, New Zealand and western Siberia.³ The review also notes that M. suaveolens has a place in the traditional medicine of the Mediterranean region.

You’ll run into plenty of stories about apple mint: that ancient Greeks cleaned banquet tables and scented baths with it, that it was strewn on temple floors, that it was called monk’s herb because monasteries grew it to treat the aftermath of epileptic seizures, and that it’s named for the shape of its leaves. We couldn’t trace any of them to a source we could open. The Spanish name hierbabuena often gets linked to apple mint too. Katzer lists it as a Spanish name for peppermint, and we found nothing tying it to apple mint specifically.²

How apple mint is used

Katzer says apple mint and pineapple mint are used more as tea herbs than in cooking, though he allows that a good cook can find uses for them.² The Božović review notes that mint leaves, flowers and stems generally end up in herbal teas and commercial spice mixtures. The RHS files apple mint among culinary herbaceous perennials.

A few good places for it:

• Tea, fresh or dried, where its softness is a plus.
• Fruit salads and drinks, in place of spearmint when you want less mint punch.
• Yogurt sauces and mint jelly, for a gentler result than spearmint gives.
• Garnish. The fuzzy leaves aren’t as glossy as spearmint, so small tips or candied leaves look better than big leaves.

Like other soft herbs, it loses flavor with long cooking. LSU AgCenter advises adding delicate herbs, mint among them, near the end.

Buying and storage

Look for bright, perky leaves with no browning. We couldn’t find a published shelf-life figure for fresh or dried apple mint. For methods that work for all mints, see how to store mint and how to dry mint.

Health and safety

We found no NIH or regulator review of apple mint itself, and no food-composition data for its leaves. The health research in the Božović review is about the essential oil and piperitenone oxide in lab tests, such as antimicrobial and insecticidal activity, not about people eating the leaf.¹ Claims that apple mint relieves arthritis, heart disease, constipation or fever couldn’t be traced to human evidence, and we’re not making them.

Some apple mint oils are dominated by pulegone.¹ We found no regulator statement on apple mint leaf specifically. The common advice to avoid all mints in pregnancy couldn’t be traced to a source for apple mint. For peppermint, see the safety notes on the peppermint page.

Substitutes and comparisons

Spearmint is the closest stand-in. It’s stronger, so use a little less. See mint substitutes.

• Apple mint vs. peppermint
• Types of mint

Other mints: mint, spearmint, peppermint, orange mint, ginger mint and chocolate mint.