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Water Mint - Mentha aquatica
Variable short to tall plant with a strong aromatic small when crushed, but not as sweetly aromatic as some other mints. Flowers lilac-pink 4 to 6 mm long in a dense oblong head often with 1 or 2 distinct whorls of flowers below.
There are many hybrid and naturalised cultivated varieties of mint, making this a difficult genus
Flowers in terminal heads, ovate leaves with distinct petioles, calyx tube hairy
Photo of whole plant in flower, including leaves; details of flowers
Any wet or swampy habitat, often with its feet in water.
July to September.
Perennial.
Common throughout Britain except in the Scottish Highlands.
Fairly common in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 325 of the 617 tetrads.
Leicestershire & Rutland Map
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Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2020+ | 2015-2019 | pre-2015
UK Map
Species profile
- Common names
- Water Mint
- Species group:
- Wildflowers
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Lamiales
- Family:
- Lamiaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 224
- First record:
- 01/07/1998 (John Mousley)
- Last record:
- 10/10/2023 (Nicholls, David)
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% of records within its species group
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Phytomyza tetrasticha
The larvae of the fly Phytomyza tetrasticha mine the leaves of mint, especially Water Mint. The mine starts with a small spiral and then develops into a greenish blotch (frequently on the leaf margin), which turns brown as it ages. The pupa is yellow-brown in the summer generation and deep black in the winter one. However, the leafmines of Phytomyza obscura and Phytomyza origani are identical those of Phytomyza tetrasticha so the adult must be reared and identified to confirm the species.