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Water mint
Mentha aquatica
52.2553, 6.14075
Field Notes
Description:
Water mint is a herbaceous rhizomatous perennial plant growing to 90 centimetres tall. The stems are square in cross section, green or purple, and variably hairy to almost hairless. The rhizomes are wide-spreading, fleshy, and bear fibrous roots. The leaves are ovate to ovate-lanceolate, 2 to 6 centimetres long and 1 to 4 centimetres broad, green sometimes purplish, opposite, toothed, and vary from hairy to nearly hairless. The flowers of the watermint are tiny, densely crowded, purple, tubular, pinkish to lilac in colour and form a terminal hemispherical inflorescence. Flowering is from mid to late summer. Water mint is pollinated by insects, and also spreads by underground rhizomes, like other species of mint. All parts of the plant have a distinctly minty smell.
Habitat:
Water mint is native to much of Europe, northern Africa and western Asia. It has been introduced to North and South America, Australia and some Atlantic islands. As the name suggests, water mint occurs in the shallow margins and channels of streams, rivers, pools, dikes, ditches, canals, wet meadows, marshes and fens. If the plant grows in the water itself, it rises above the surface of the water. It generally occurs on mildly acidic to calcareous mineral or peaty soils.
Notes:
Spotted on a flood plain of the Ijssel river in rural area of Deventer, Holland.
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