The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Clinopodium nepeta
Also called Calamint
Lesser calamint is a low, bushy perennial herb of the mint family, forming a compact mound of small oregano-scented leaves. It grows best in full sun and well-drained soil, and it self-seeds freely.
Clinopodium nepeta (synonym: Calamintha nepeta), known as lesser calamint, is a perennial herb of the mint family known for having fragrant, grey-green, oregano-like leaves with a pennyroyal smell. It is also called niepita, and mentuccia romana. This plant commonly grows across the Mediterranean, North Africa and parts of Central Asia and has traditionally been used as a folk medicine and culinary herb. A recent study also found cultivars of lesser catmint that had the same compounds in catnip that cause the euphoric effect in cats, known as nepetalactone.
Lesser calamint is commonly used as a herb in the Italian and Corsican cuisine, where it is called nepita, mentuccia, nipitella or nepitella. In Rome it is used in the preparation of the Carciofi alla Romana. In southern Italy it is used in the making of a goat cheese called cassiedu, giving the cheese a minty taste. Some sources state that Nepeta nepetella can be used in cooking like the lesser calamint.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Clinopodium nepeta by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
