HERB - safety of orange bergamot mint

[Kathleen Keeler]

Jenne Heise wrote:

> I have had, for many years, in my other's garden, a big patch of what the
> local herb shop owner confirmed for me as being orange bergamot mint.
> <snip>Jo Ann Gardener's description  in _Living with Herbs_: "the
> dark-stemmed organge or bergamot mint (M. x piperita 'Citrata'), its large
> leaves thinly lined with red at their edges, and with a citrusy or sharp
> flavor" certainly fits it.
>
> So, we had a lot of it. It made lousy tea, and you wouldn't want to use it
> in salad  but it was good, dried, in potpourris, and lately I thought
> I had found it's ultimate purpose-- I used it in sekanjibin and the
> results were amazngly good.
>
> Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise        jenne at tulgey.browser.net

bergamot is normally a genus of New World mints, like, but not identical to,
the mints of Europe
(bergamot is _Monarda_, peppermint and spearmint are _Mentha_)

If you have _Mentha x piperita_  [the x in the name indicates its a  hybrid of
two naturally occurring species] you have peppermint, and since peppermint is a
sterile hybrid, it isn't going to have changed very much, just spread and
spread.  Peppermint is generally safe. I think, short of allergy, there would
be no problem with it in sekanjeban (consider the dose of your orange bergamot
mint that a glass of sekanjeban would contain!)

Anyone pick up an angle that would raise concern?

Weirdly, there's a bergamot orange that is an orange (genus _Citrus_)

the USDA's plant ID page is quite good:  http://plants.usda.gov  for providing
long lists of synonyms to check out.
Tho it has a US (not Medieval Europe) bias.

Back to end-of-semester craziness,
Agnes
kkeeler1 at unl.edu

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