Japanese Mint

Japanese Mint

Aka cornmint, wild mint, field mint

Mentha arvensis

Labiateae family (lamiaceae)

Grown, harvested and steam distilled in India from organically grown herbs.

Arctander says

Mentha arvensis oil is a pale yellow or almost colorless liquid of strong, fresh, and somewhat bittersweet odor, to a certain degree reminiscent of the odor of peppermint oil. The undertone is a bit harsh-woody and the dry-out is bitter-herbaceous. It produces a cool feeling on the mucus membranes in the nose and mouth cavities or upon direct contact with the skin. The flavor is cool, minty, somewhat rough and slightly bitter-green or sharp, less balsamic-herbaceous or sweet than the flavor of true peppermint.

Mentha arvensis finds extensive use as a flavor in candy, toothpaste, mouthwash, etc. He goes on to say (in 1960) that chewing gum is often flavored with 0.7 to 1.0 percent of true peppermint oil and that, after a few “chews,” the customer is unable to identify the arvensis oil inside the gum because of the pleasant cooling and paralyzing effect of the good peppermint oil in the outer coating.

Mint

Already, we'd be driving past

those trees, that part of the forest.

Even briefly, it refreshed you.

It was like mint in August

though that sting would be gone

with summer. The ground

tarnishing first, and soon the leaves.

I thought then, men don't stop.

They want so much to get on.

What we said, incidental

yet hammered into the mind.

Talk like a magnet, so it draws you

together or away. We made a line

around that part of the forest,

the exact shape of our attention.

Even after, I remember

how it was taken up and moved

along with us, into the dim

living room. Each holding a glass,

ice colliding in water. A tiny

mirrored sun caught in the trees.

The same sadness that darkened

our features. Later, bed

without making love, without

the chance of a reprieve.

--Elaine Terranova