Pennyroyal
Mentha pulegium
A low mint historically used as a flea herb and folk tea. The essential oil and high internal doses have caused serious liver injury and deaths. Not a culinary mint. Not for pregnancy folklore.
GROW → HARVEST → EAT → DRY → POWDER → CAPSULE → GUMMY — forms are not equivalent. Food first.
Identity
What it is
A low mint historically used as a flea herb and folk tea. The essential oil and high internal doses have caused serious liver injury and deaths. Not a culinary mint. Not for pregnancy folklore.
Identification
Prostrate mint with small leaves and a pungent, threatening pennyroyal odor — not sweet candy mint.
From the existing encyclopedia
Pennyroyal is a mint-relative historically used as a flea repellent and in folk teas. The essential oil has caused serious poisoning and liver damage when misused. Not appropriate for home ingestion or pregnancy-associated folk remedies. aaaLifetime does not sell pennyroyal oil or capsules. Document for identification and safety awareness only.
Edible portions
Safety Not treated as food on this site.
Growing
- Climate. 6–9
- Light. Sun, moisture
- Soil. Moist
- Planting. Do not plant it as a tea crop.
Safety
- Not for ingestion. Oil is dangerous. This page is a warning so pennyroyal is not treated as peppermint.
- Oil and high doses are dangerous; not for ingestion.
Next steps
Sources
- USDA PLANTS Database — taxonomy and range (verify current entries)
- No USDA FoodData Central nutrient profile is attached here. That is not a claim that the plant contains no nutrients.
- State cooperative extension growing guides — verify for your region
- Integrated from the existing aaaLifetime / quantum-biohack encyclopedia corpus (unique text preserved where it was not boilerplate).
Honest incompleteness is preferred to fabricated completeness. If a section is missing, no record for it is attached here — not a claim that the plant lacks that characteristic, and not that it was omitted as a secret.
Internal quality class A. Strong page: distinctive plant facts plus practical growing or kitchen use.