zxcvbob wrote:
Henriette Kress wrote:

I'm sure I've missed some, but shrug.

How about coleus? I think it's a mint;

A few definitions of "mint": true mints are Mentha spp.

To confuse things, these true mints are also "mints", in the sense that
they're in the mint family, Lamiaceae (Labiatae). (If we were to go by
latin family names, the Lamiaceae would be "deadnettles" in English.)

The Lamiaceae is one of the larger families, containing hundreds if not
thousands of genera, and thousands if not tens of thousands of species
- and if we shove varieties, forms, subspecies and cultivars into a corner
where they can be conveniently forgotten, they're theoretically countable,
if rather unmanageable.


Then there's the "culinary" mint: plants that taste minty, or that have
been used in foods or teas instead of or like mints, or that have "mint"
somewhere in their name (usually because they've been used in foods and
teas like mints, but catmint for one certainly isn't culinary).

I was listing "culinary" mints earlier in this thread.

Both coleus and salvia are in the mint family, but that doesn't mean
they have a minty taste, or have been used like mints; and they don't have
"mint" in their names.

I have no idea if it's edible.

Most Coleus species are edible, and I haven't heard of an outright
toxic one.
Some Coleuses are now Plectranthus - and the other way around. Don't ask,
I don't have a clue what botanists think they're doing.

Also the sages (salvia). I don't know if all of them are edible.

The salvias are all edible, but they might not taste of much.

Hetta

--
Henriette Kress, AHG Helsinki, Finland
Henriette's herbal homepage: http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed
Best of RHOD: http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/rhod/main.html