I’m often surprised by just how many of the mint family we use in herbal medicine – and I must admit that I love how easy it often is to see the family resemblance between members of this numerous and prolific family, so often regarded as a weed!
Over the next few weeks I shall be writing about a number of the various mint family members that we use for medicine, including the following:
- Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)
How’s that for a rogue’s gallery?? And that’s not including peppermint and spearmint, and hyssop, none of which I currently have suitable pictures for, but for which photographs will be added in the near future! I suspect that the explorations into this plant family will keep me busy and entertained up until Yuletide – keep an eye on this blog for writings about this versatile and rather wonderful plant family!
I look forward to your thoughts, Ali! xx
Didn’t know nettles were related to mint.
Now I’m wondering if they have a minty taste to them, but the thought of how painful they’d be on the tongue is preventing me from checking, hehe.
The garden space I have is kind of overgrown with weeds (I don’t know much about gardening, so I tend to just leave it for Nature to do her own thing with), and there are a few nettles hiding in there.
If it were up to me I’d just leave it alone apart from keeping the path clear, but since I live in a council-owned house I get the wardens on my back if I don’t “tidy it up” occasionally.
Typical of the human mindset really, trying to force order on something that thrives on chaos…
Anyway, back on topic.
Definitely interested in hearing more about the mint family 🙂
If you cook young nettle leaves from the very tops of the plants, they lose their sting. It just takes a few minutes and they go deliciously in Miso soup, in my opinion. 🙂