“Mintless” Mints of Hawai’i

Stenogyne: one of our “mintless” mints of Hawai’i — What’s the story?

Members of the mint family (Lamiaceae) are frequently aromatic in all parts and include such widely used herbs as basil, peppermint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, oregano, thyme and lavender. The evolutionary story goes that the minty-ness of these plants makes them unpalatable to most herbivores; ie. it keeps them from being eaten. As these plants grew in Hawai’i, generation after generation, there was no survival advantage to being strongly flavored, so the genes for that trait stopped being expressed in Hawaiian mints.

For those of us blessed to see these plants flowering in the native forests, we are glad that their showy-ness continues to make them attractive to pollinators! I was lucky to find this plant loaded with flowers on one of our field trips with Waikoloa Middle School students into the wet forest this past spring!