A new friend...I hope...

Wandering home from my favourite coffee shop today, with my head down looking for plants as usual, I spied the plant in the photos above.

It caught my eye as its colour was out of the usual range of colours for the park at this time of year. Closer investigation showed me that I didn't know what it was. Ouch!

Here's me taking wild food and bushfood walks in the local area and in in this park in particular and I didn't recognise it. I'm pretty familiar with most of the locals and this was a treat indeed.

So, what do you do when you have a plant that you don't know and hope is edible? Here's the process I went through.

First, I looked around to see where it is located. That can give you a good idea of how it got there. In this case, there were four plants, close together, beneath a Gumtree. That told me that it had arrived by bird as a seed. Birds often poop out undigested seeds which then do quite well as they are deposited with a little moisture and fertilizer, courtesy of the bird.

Then, what is its habit? No, not what it is doing wrong, how does it grow? This one has long stems growing from a central point (confirming the seed theory). It is only mid-shin high and almost prostrate (laying down).

Next, I pick a bit and smell it. Minty.

To confirm that it was a indeed a mint of some sort, I checked the stem. It was definitely square - that's a give away for many members of Lamiaceae or the Mint family, especially our common garden mints.

So we have a mint but which species? That's a bit trickier, there are so many species and cultivars and they are a promiscuous lot, hybridizing very easily. It's so hard to keep them straight that I don't bother except for key herbal varieties and it was none of them.

I didn't recognise the feathery, almost fern-like leaves, but they were alternate up the stem. That's another clear feature that confirmed it as a mint.

The next step was to look at the flowers. Their colour, arrangement and position on the stem are all important indicators. Unfortunately, this one isn't in flower and I can't clearly see where they would be.

So we have a Mint that we don't know in a place where we haven't seen one before. The park is well within suburbia, so is most likely a garden escapee. In that case, it's fairly safe to taste a tiny bit.

Delicious!

So now, it's off to check the books and try and get an accurate ID that way. I'll let you know!

This is #originalwork. The pics were taken by yours truly.

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