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An ancient cure for over-indulging |
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Monday, 21 January 2008 |
Common calamint – baume sauvage or calament – Latin Calamintha ascendens.
I asked a French friend if she knew the
common calamint. “Connais-tu cette
plante?” She took a look and a sniff and
replied, as I thought, “C’est menthe au lait.”
Later I searched my books on the botany of
France but the name did not seem to exist.
Then it dawned on me. She had said
“mentholée” – minty.
The plant has an exceedingly powerful
minty smell, perhaps a bit more menthol than
mint. But it is not, in the botanical sense, a
true mint, which has a different flower form.
Mint flowers are approximately radially
symmetrical, so that if you cut one straight
through on any diameter the two halves look
much the same, and the five petal lobes,
though not
exactly identical,
are very similar.
But the flowers
of the calamint
quite clearly have
two lips, rather
like a deadnettle.
Calamint is
found along
many waysides
and particularly
where the soil is
limey. The 60cmtall
plants are
conspicuous
when in full
flower.The
leaves are 1 to 2cm wide, the stems square in
section. The two lower teeth of the calyx (the
structure holding the petal tube) are longer
than the other three upper ones.
 
The photo was taken in mid November,
after a series of frosts. It is frost resistant
which makes one wonder why it is only found
sporadically in southern Britain, and is losing
ground there and in all the more northern parts
of Europe. In Belgium it is now only found in
one place close to the French border.
In France it is reasonably common. It
flowers from summer to as late in the year
as December.
The leaves, dried or fresh, make an
excellent minty tisane. The plant was sought
after in the
middle ages by
herbalists, as a
relief for hiccups,
belching and
other flatulence,
and was
recommended
after a large
meal. So it’s
logical that these
days, it takes the
form of afterdinner
mints! In
the 1200s it was
promoted by a
certain doctor,
Bernard de
Gourdon, a son
of the house of
the lords of
Gourdon, where I
now live. It became one of the
herbs in the famous liqueur the
‘grande élixir de Chartreuse’ and
of the Eau d’arquebusade, a potion supposed
to help cure battle wounds. The name
calamint derives from its use by the early
herbalists and means the ‘excellent mint’ in
Greek – you might say it is the mint ‘par
excellence’.
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Downtime 
