Calamintha nepeta - Lesser Calamint seeds

The Calamintha nepeta, renamed Clinopodium nepeta, is a small aromatic perennial plant known as the lesser Calamint. It is used as a condiment and in herbal medicine for its digestive properties. Its small hairy leaves, rich in essential oils, have a powerful scent of mint and menthol. The light, nectariferous, and melliferous flowering occurs between summer and autumn. It resembles a beautiful mist of small white-pink flowers that turn more mauve towards the end of the season. In the garden, the lesser Calamint easily finds its place in rockeries and borders where it readily self-seeds. It is an excellent plant for dry and limestone soils, perfectly adapted to the Mediterranean zone.

Calamintha nepeta, the false nepeta calamint, belongs to the large family of Lamiaceae, like mints, marjorams, thymes, sages, and lavenders. It is a spontaneous botanical species in southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor. It is a rhizomatous plant with a dense stump. Its vegetation sometimes persists during winter in the South, but it disappears in colder regions. In spring, the lesser Calamint forms a neat little cushion. The thin square-sectioned stems elongate and then branch out, forming a beautiful clump about 40 cm (16in) in all directions. The leaves are very small, hairy, slightly toothed, dark greyish green, and remarkably aromatic: with the slightest touch, they exude a characteristic, very refreshing scent. Flowering begins in June-July and continues until October. It is not spectacular but is charming: the tiny flowers, borne on tall inflorescences, bloom for a long period. Their white-pink colour, quite pale at the beginning of the season, becomes more bluish-purple as temperatures drop towards autumn. Calamintha nepeta slowly colonises the soil through its rhizomes.

The lesser Calamint is a very common plant in dry Mediterranean gardens, where it tends to self-seed everywhere. However, it easily adapts further north if planted in well-drained soil, not too wet in winter. This aromatic plant is traditionally used dried, in small quantities, in many Corsican (under the name nepita) and Italian culinary specialties, and sometimes in infusions. Suited to arid situations, as well as poor, limestone, and rocky soils, it works wonders in rockeries, on slopes, along paths or borders, and between the paving stones of a stone step. It is an excellent complement to many flowers in the garden, especially red and fuchsia-pink shrubby salvias, Caryopteris, Perovskia, gauras, and asters preferring drier soil.