I have received my bunch from ebay, and my GOOOODDDDD each one is so accurate with their label. How do you even DO THAT? I have strawberry mint and chocolate mint that is sooo obvious!

I must know how!

It's just a guess, but in the process of plant evolution, the plant might produce those scents to attract or repel pollinators or as a survival tool, eg. to make themselves unattractive to grazing animals like rabbits and deer. The ones that taste bad to those animals survive and reproduce and the others die out.

They have distinctive essential oils in the leaves that combine to smell like other plants/fruits. There are lemon-y ones and pineapple-y ones and many others, too. Basils have different flavors and scents, as well.

When people discover a plant that smells or tastes appealing, they choose to cultivate it so those plants become more widely available. Then they get cross-bred to produce even more combinations of scents or other attributes. There are probably aromatic herbs that smell awful, too but people wouldn't generally choose to grow those.

? I see the Mentha x piperita 'Chocolate' in our database but we don't seem to have Mentha spicata 'Strawberry' in our database.

Hope they grow good for you.

Edited to add:
Oops, I see that the Strawberry Mint is in the database:
Mint (Mentha spicata 'Strawberry')

Trust me. The strawberry is legit. It almost smells like cold strawberry slushy or ice cream amazing . ..

I like the pineapple sage. It really smells like pineapple.

Other than guessing that someone cultivated them to be that way a long time ago, I would imagine the other case is that the plants were naturally like this. When the first person who smelled it said, 'this smells like chocolate', then it got that as the common name. So it might be more like the plant smelled like that first, and then it got its name, instead of someone deciding one day, 'i will use government and public funding to make a mint that smells like chocolate.'

Haha, makes sense

Thought you might find this link interesting... breeding a new mint, Hillary's Sweet Lemon Mint

http://www.google.com/patents/...

That's yours?

No, it is not my brainchild. I stumbled across the link while looking for something else and thought it was interesting. It lends itself to the possibility/idea of breeding "designer fragrance" mints.

Crazy world nonetheless thanks!

What ebay seller did you get yours from? (Sounds like you're pretty happy with the plants as well as with their scents)

critterologist said:What ebay seller did you get yours from? (Sounds like you're pretty happy with the plants as well as with their scents)

http://www.ebay.com/usr/grocop...

thx!

One tip -- don't let your hybrid mints go to seed, or you could end up with lots of seedlings that aren't quite the same... which could be fun, but you probably want to keep a "pure" pot going too

Yea, this will be something to tackle, maybe I'll have window boxes fsrrr from each other

just cut them back after they start to flower. you really don't want them to seed from self-crossing, either.