Types of Mint: The Species, Hybrids and Garden Mints Cooks Actually Meet

Nursery labels list far more mints than the genus holds. Mentha has about 25 species by Britannica’s count, or 25 to 30 by a 2018 review’s,¹² and the extra names come from hybrids and garden cultivars. Even peppermint is a natural hybrid, and “strawberry” and “grapefruit” mints are cultivars of existing species. In the kitchen, “mint” usually means spearmint or peppermint. The rest differ mainly in which compound leads their oil, and that’s the handiest way to tell them apart.

You’ll often see a claim that there are over 600 kinds of mint. We couldn’t find a source for that number or any explanation of where it came from.

The mints at a glance

Two plants called mint aren’t in the genus at all: lemon balm and Korean mint (more below).

Spearmint and peppermint

Spearmint (Mentha spicata) is native from Europe to China. Its oil is rich in carvone,² and it’s sweeter and less cooling than peppermint. It’s the mint in British mint sauce for lamb. More: spearmint, spearmint vs. peppermint.

Peppermint (Mentha × piperita) is a natural cross between water mint and spearmint. Its oil is mostly menthol and menthone.² Katzer notes that true peppermint goes almost entirely into candy and sweet liqueurs.⁷ More: peppermint, apple mint vs. peppermint, peppermint substitutes.

Water mint and its garden forms

Water mint (Mentha aquatica) is the wild, wet-ground parent of peppermint, native to Africa and from Europe to western Asia and central Siberia. Two Italian samples gave oils with 38.4–55.9% menthofuran, a different compound from peppermint’s menthol.³ See watermint.

Orange mint, also sold as bergamot or eau de Cologne mint, gets filed differently depending on who you ask. Kew sinks Mentha citrata into water mint, while the RHS lists it as a form of peppermint.⁴⁵ Either way, the leaves smell like eau de Cologne. Katzer compares the scent to the bergamot orange in Earl Grey tea.⁷ See orange mint and cooking with orange mint.

Chocolate mint is a garden selection the RHS puts in the same group, as M. × piperita f. citrata ‘Chocolate’, with minty-chocolate scented leaves.⁶ See chocolate mint.

Apple, pineapple and the woolly mints

Apple mint is the RHS’s name for Mentha suaveolens, a mint with softly hairy leaves. Its native range runs from Macaronesia and Europe to the Mediterranean. Sources don’t agree on how it smells. The RHS calls the leaves apple-scented, while Katzer finds apple mint very mild, slightly minty and nothing like apples.⁸⁷ The names get tangled here too. Katzer treats apple mint as M. rotundifolia, a hybrid of horse mint (M. longifolia) and M. suaveolens, and Kew lists M. × rotundifolia var. suaveolens among the synonyms of M. suaveolens.¹⁵

Pineapple mint is the variegated form, M. suaveolens ‘Variegata’, with cream-edged leaves. Katzer calls it weakly pineapple-like and says these mints go into tea more than cooking.⁷ Both are covered on the apple mint page.

Egyptian mint. In Kew’s treatment, the old name Mentha niliaca is a synonym of Mentha × rotundifolia,¹⁴ the hybrid Katzer equates with apple mint.⁷ We found no source describing its flavor, and claims that it tastes halfway between peppermint and spearmint couldn’t be traced.

Ginger mint and Moroccan mint

Ginger mint (Mentha × gracilis) is a hybrid of field mint and spearmint, native from western Europe to Italy. Despite the name, Katzer finds it “neither minty nor ginger-like at all.”⁷ See ginger mint.

Moroccan mint is spearmint. Katzer identifies Moroccan green mint as Mentha spicata and notes that green mint tea is the “national beverage” of Morocco and Tunisia.⁷ It’s sometimes labeled M. spicata var. crispa, which Kew treats as a synonym of ordinary spearmint;¹⁶ Katzer describes curly mint as minty with a hint of caraway. No source ties the Moroccan tea mint to the curly form, or calls it lemon mint. See Moroccan mint.

Field mint and Corsican mint

Field mint (Mentha arvensis) is a perennial native from Europe to Kamchatka and Nepal. It matters more to industry than to cooks. Katzer calls it the world’s most important source of menthol, with an oil that’s 50 to 70% menthol, and notes it’s the only mint naturalized in tropical Asia.⁷ None of the sources we opened describes a distinct culinary use.

Corsican mint (Mentha requienii) is native to Corsica, Sardinia and Italy. The RHS describes a mat-forming plant about 1 cm tall with peppermint-scented leaves up to 7 mm across.⁹ You’ll often read that it flavors crème de menthe, but we found no source that supports it.

Strawberry and grapefruit mints

These are cultivar names, and the RHS files plants under each one in two different places:

So a plant sold as grapefruit mint might be an apple mint or an eau de Cologne-type peppermint. We found no oil analysis of either cultivar.

Mints that are not Mentha

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) belongs to the mint family, Lamiaceae, but not to the mint genus. It’s native from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. See lemon balm and lemon balm vs. mint.

Korean mint (Agastache rugosa) is another Lamiaceae plant outside Mentha. Estragole is the main compound of its oil in the most common chemotype among wild Korean plants tested, and made up 89.49% of one earlier sample that Hong et al. tabulate.¹⁷ It comes across more as anise than mint. See Korean mint.

Using any mint

As a loose rule, the carvone mints (spearmint, Moroccan) go into savory food and the menthol mints into sweets and drinks. For technique, storage and fixes:

• Mint · Mint uses · Cooking with mint
• Mint substitutes · Too much mint?
• How to store mint · Can you freeze mint? · How to dry mint
• Basil vs. mint · Oregano vs. mint