Apple Mint: The Mild, Woolly Mint, Its Name Tangle, and the Compounds Behind Its Scent

Apple mint is a soft, mild mint with round, hairy leaves, usually sold under the name Mentha suaveolens.¹² It is native to southern and western Europe,² and its aroma owes little to menthol: in most oils analyzed, the main compound is piperitenone oxide.² The flavor is gentle enough that apple mint is used more for tea than for cooking.³ Pineapple mint is a cream-edged, variegated form of the same plant.⁴

At a glance

What apple mint is

The RHS describes apple mint as a vigorous, rhizomatous perennial up to 90 cm tall, with rounded, softly hairy, apple-scented leaves up to 4 cm long and dense spikes of tiny pale purple flowers in late summer and early fall.¹ The hairs give it the name woolly mint; Božović and colleagues describe the leaves as hairy above and often gray- or white-felted.¹²

Pineapple mint is the variegated cultivar M. suaveolens ‘Variegata’, a smaller plant (up to 40 cm) with pale green leaves edged in cream.⁴ The RHS also lists it as variegated apple mint.⁴

A naming tangle

Sources do not agree on what “apple mint” is botanically:

The review itself flags one sample, from Córdoba, Argentina, as probably a hybrid rather than true M. suaveolens.² Katzer and the RHS also differ on the scent: the RHS calls the leaves apple-scented, while Katzer finds apple mint very mild, slightly minty and not reminiscent of apples.¹³

Flavor and aroma

Apple mint is soft and rounded rather than cold: a mild mint note with a faintly sweet, fruity edge, and none of peppermint’s bite. That description is ours.

The compounds

Božović, Pirolli and Ragno’s 2015 review collects analyses of M. suaveolens oil from many places and sorts them into three broad profiles: one rich in pulegone, one rich in piperitenone oxide, and one with similar amounts of piperitenone oxide and piperitone oxide.² Samples differ widely:

Source: Božović et al., Molecules 2015.² These are individual samples and should not be merged into a single typical figure. What they show is that apple mint usually smells of piperitenone oxide rather than menthol or carvone, with real chemical variation from place to place.

Origin and history

Božović and colleagues give the native range as southern and western Europe, reaching north to the Netherlands, and note that it is grown as a pot herb and has naturalized in parts of northern and central Europe, usually along streams and in damp places.² Kew’s range is Macaronesia and Europe to the Mediterranean, with introductions as far as North America, New Zealand and western Siberia.⁵ The review also notes that M. suaveolens has been used in the traditional medicine of the Mediterranean region.²

Several stories about apple mint circulate: that ancient Greeks cleaned banquet tables and scented baths with it, that it was strewn on temple floors, that it was called monk’s herb because monasteries grew it to treat the aftermath of epileptic seizures, and that it got its name from the shape of its leaves. None could be traced to a source we could open. The Spanish name hierbabuena is also often linked to apple mint; Katzer lists it as a Spanish name for peppermint, and we found no source tying it to apple mint specifically.³

How apple mint is used

Katzer says apple mint and pineapple mint are used more as tea herbs than in cooking, while allowing that a good cook can find uses for them.³ The Božović review notes that mint leaves, flowers and stems generally go into herbal teas and commercial spice mixtures.² The RHS files apple mint among culinary herbaceous perennials.¹

Kitchen suggestions (editorial, not sourced):

• Tea, fresh or dried, where its softness is an advantage.
• Fruit salads and drinks, in place of spearmint when you want less mint intensity.
• Yogurt sauces and mint jelly, for a gentler result than spearmint.
• Garnish. The fuzzy leaves look less glossy than spearmint; small tips or candied leaves work better than large leaves.

Like other soft herbs, it loses flavor with long cooking; LSU AgCenter advises adding delicate herbs, mint among them, near the end.⁶

Buying and storage

Look for bright, unwilted leaves with no browning (kitchen judgment). We found no published shelf-life figure for fresh or dried apple mint. For methods that apply to all mints, see how to store mint and how to dry mint.

Health and safety

We found no NIH or regulator review of apple mint itself, and no food-composition data for its leaves. The health research gathered in the Božović review concerns the essential oil and piperitenone oxide in laboratory tests, such as antimicrobial and insecticidal activity, not people eating the leaf.² Claims that apple mint relieves arthritis, heart disease, constipation or fever could not be traced to human evidence, and this page makes no such claim.

Some apple mint oils are dominated by pulegone.² We found no regulator statement on apple mint leaf specifically. The common advice to avoid all mints in pregnancy could not be traced to a source for apple mint; for peppermint, see the safety notes on the peppermint page.

Substitutes and comparisons

Spearmint is the closest stand-in; use a little less, since it is stronger (editorial, Method: no tested ratio exists). See mint substitutes.

• Apple mint vs. peppermint
• Types of mint

Other mints: mint, spearmint, peppermint, orange mint, ginger mint and chocolate mint.