Mountain Mint

[Peanut]

Mountain Mint aka Hoary Mint aka Wild Basil aka Pycnanthemum incanum

Its been used in southern folk medicine for a couple hundred years. The Cherokee used it much longer than that. This plant has several closely related cousins around the country. I’m sure native peoples everywhere used it. I just don’t have the documentation in my small library.

To quote Tommie Bass “a good medicine for sinuses and for allergies you get in the Fall of the year. You can smoke it like rabbit terbakker or you can put it in boiling water and inhale the steam. It’ll open you right up but mind you it’s just a temporary relief. I usually put it in my cough and cold tonic for things like asthma and bronchitis. It’s real wonderful for that.”

I know several people who use it in cold/flu type medicines. I keep track of where its growing and harvest leaves in small amounts to dry and keep on hand each year. I’ve also harvested the blooms, dried them and used them in my clothes dryer (sealed in cheese cloth) they smell wonderful as does the whole plant.

Darryl P has a write up in the book about Tommie. Patricia K. Howell has a nice write up in her book.

See - https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/herbal-medicine-books-peanut-recommends.6745/

In august the top of the plant turns white, it really stands out. I usually find it growing at the edges of fields, clearings and gravel roads. The tops of the lower leaves remain green but their underside turn white.

I took a couple of these photo’s last August but wasn’t feeling up to posting until now. I added a few I’ve taken in previous years.

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

Love this plant! It is rich in thymol which is useful for a lot of good things, including inhaling in a steam vapor for mild expectorant action.

Old-timers used to hang the dried plant in clothes closets to drive out moths.

I definitely will try your trick of putting it in a cheesecloth bag in the clothes dryer; I really enjoy the way mountain mint smells!

 

[viking]

I have two main types of mint on our place, I planted Cat mint (cat nip) seeds many years ago and they are still around and I found some Lemon Balm growing in a spring area along side of the road about 20 miles down the road past our place and the Lemon Balm (lemon mint) are still growing where I planted them many years ago. We also have a lot of Mint that grows naturally around here, usually shows up in the spring when the ground is still damp. One more mint we have here is Pennyroyal and that generally grows in really dry places like the driveway and extremely dry spots in the lower garden area, I love to walk through pennyroyal because it has such a beautiful smell that come up to you, also when I'm mowing it really lets you know that it's around. The only thing about pennyroyal that I've heard about is that it has some properties in it that can be harmful and before it's used, you really need to do the research as to what the side effects can be. It does work great for deodorizing shoe soles after being in the chicken coop and that's a very good thing.

 

[Patchouli]

We have aromatic bee balm here, the wild one. On a hot spring or summer day you can smell it if it is nearby.
I'm not providing any info at the moment, but it is also in the mint family.

 

[Peanut]

Mountain mint is blooming today. A pretty good year for it after 7 or 8 bad years. It's a weird and sensitive plant when it comes to growing. I have sown hundreds of seeds, not one ever came up. If you disturb the soil near it, it dies. A "great year" for it, plentiful etc only happens about once a decade. I've only seen a "great year" once since 2005. This year is a lot better than average but still not great.

 

[Bacpacker]

Mountain mint is blooming today. A pretty good year for it after 7 or 8 bad years. It's a weird and sensitive plant when it comes to growing. I have sown hundreds of seeds, not one ever came up. If you disturb the soil near it, it dies. A "great year" for it, plentiful etc only happens about once a decade. I've only seen a "great year" once since 2005. This year is a lot better than average but still not great.

View attachment 91015

We just saw a bunch of it when we drove thru Cades Cove a couple weeks ago. It was everywhere.

 

[Peanut]

We just saw a bunch of it when we drove thru Cades Cove a couple weeks ago. It was everywhere.

Try harvesting and drying the blooms. Wrap them in cheese cloth and use them in the clothes dryer. They smell wonderful!

 

[joel]

it looks a little like Bee Balm.