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Toxic☠️ To avoid💊 Medicinal

⚠️ Pennyroyal

Mentha pulegium · Lamiaceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🫒 Mediterranean
🧠 To remember it“Pennyroyal: the mint you no longer drink” — among all wild mints in Europe, it is the only one whose use as tea is currently advised against by scientific literature due to pulegone.
Pennyroyal — Mentha pulegium

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Small creeping mint with a very strong minty smell, recognizable by its purple flowers grouped in tight whorls spaced regularly all along the stem (unlike most other mints, which have a continuous terminal spike). Historically used in herbal medicine, it is now strongly discouraged due to its liver toxicity.

  1. square stem, creeping then erect, often hairy
  2. small oval leaves, very strong and pungent minty smell when crushed
  3. mauve-pink flowers grouped in dense AND SEPARATE whorls, arranged in layered rings all along the stem
  4. grows in low mats in wet to waterlogged spots in summer (temporary ponds, edges of dried-up pools)
  5. more pungent and "camphoraceous" smell than classic peppermint
Size10-30 cm
Floweringjuillet-octobre
Habitatdamp meadows, pond margins and ditches, often on waterlogged soil that dries out in summer

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Water mint or other mints edible in moderation (Mentha aquatica)pennyroyal is significantly more toxic (high pulegone concentration) than other common mints; do not consume, even as an infusion

To tell them apart: the arrangement of flowers in separate, spaced whorls along the stem (rather than in a continuous terminal spike) and the more pungent, camphoraceous smell point to pennyroyal; when in doubt, refrain

💊 Healing with it

historically used as an herbal tea for emmenagogue and digestive purposes, an usage now formally advised against by modern scientific literature

Level of evidence : traditional use — PMC — Mentha pulegium L.: A Plant Underestimated for Its Toxicity ; PMC — Abortion or Fetal-Mediated Toxicity

⚠️ TOXIC: the plant contains pulegone, a hepatotoxic compound that converts in the liver into toxic metabolites (menthofuran) causing severe liver damage and neurological disorders, even in herbal teas; abortifacient effect documented in animals and strongly suspected in humans — strictly forbidden during pregnancy and discouraged for everyone, including occasional herbal teas

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • used in Roman Antiquity as an insect repellent and to flavor questionable drinking water, a practice that long masked its real toxicity due to a lack of chemical analysis
Sources (3)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.