Lesser basil (Calamintha sylvatica)

Image - Wikimedia / Xemenendura

If you like aromatics with precious flowers, we recommend giving the Calamintha sylvatica. Although it is herbaceous, it grows large enough to be used, for example, as a path-marking plant, or to be grown in container gardens.

Maintenance is really easy; in fact, with minimal care, it will flower for much of the year.

Origin and characteristics

Image - Wikimedia / Xemenendura

It is a perennial herbaceous and stoloniferous Originally from Europe and North Africa known as calaminta, minor basil, amola, californian, pennyroyal, mint, orchard tea or catnip. The current scientific name is Clinopodium menthifolium subsp. menthifoliumTherefore Calamintha sylvatica has become a synonym for it.

It grows to a height of up to 80 centimeters, with more or less erect stems from which ovate or almost rounded leaves emerge, whole to slightly toothed. Blooms from late spring to fall. Its flowers are grouped in axillary inflorescences, each measuring between 1,2 and 2cm in diameter.

What are their cares?

Image - Flickr / Andreas Rockstein

If you want to have a copy of Calamintha sylvatica, we recommend that you provide the following care:

• Location: it must be outside, in semi-shade.
• Earth:
  • Pot: use universal growing medium (on sale here) mixed with 20% perlite.
  • Garden: grows in fertile, well-drained soils.
• Irrigation: about 3-5 times a week in summer, and about 2 times a week the rest of the year.
• Subscriber: in spring and summer with organic fertilizers and / or Home, once a month.
• Multiplication: by seeds and stolons in spring.
• Planting or transplanting time: in spring, when the risk of frost has passed.
• Pruning: after flowering the stems can be trimmed to have a rounded and compact shape.
• Rusticity: it resists frosts down to -12ºC.

What do you think?