Clinopodium nepeta(L.) Kuntze

lesser calamint

WFO wfo-0000892607 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Clinopodium nepeta, photographed by Elizabete Marchante
fig. a Elizabete Marchante, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-12-12 / obs. 172177378

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
4009005
Filed as
Clinopodium nepeta subsp. glandulosum (Req.) Govaerts
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 29 botanical countries

Regions where Clinopodium nepeta is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, East Aegean Is., Iran, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaEast Aegean Is.IranLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceHungaryItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-Europe BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Clinopodium nepeta, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 417 in flower of 465 examined

Proportion of examined Clinopodium nepeta in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 11 14 79% 52% to 92%
Feb 3 8 38% 14% to 69%
Mar 0 7 0% 0% to 35%
Apr 4 20 20% 8% to 42%
May 4 11 36% 15% to 65%
Jun 12 18 67% 44% to 84%
Jul 32 33 97% 85% to 99%
Aug 54 55 98% 90% to 100%
Sep 91 91 100% 96% to 100%
Oct 110 111 99% 95% to 100%
Nov 68 68 100% 95% to 100%
Dec 28 29 97% 83% to 99%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Clinopodium nepeta observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 417 of 465 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,979 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.3 °C 2.5 °C 8.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.1 °C 27.4 °C 31.0 °C
Annual rainfall 597 mm 855 mm 1,520 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 26 mm 122 mm 233 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,979 research-grade observations of Clinopodium nepeta that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 150 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Acinos transsilvanica Schur
  • Calamintha acinifolia Sennen
  • Calamintha adscendens Willk. & Lange
  • Calamintha alboi Sennen
  • Calamintha athonica Rchb.
  • Calamintha baetica Boiss. & Reut.
  • Calamintha barolesii Sennen
  • Calamintha bonanovae Sennen
  • Calamintha bonanovae Sennen & Pau
  • Calamintha brauneana (Hoppe ex Rchb.) O.Schwarz
  • Calamintha brevisepala Sennen
  • Calamintha byzantina K.Koch
  • Calamintha caballeroi Sennen & Pau
  • Calamintha cacuminiglabra Sennen
  • Calamintha calamintha (L.) H.Karst.
  • Calamintha cantabrica Sennen & Elías
  • Calamintha dilatata Schrad.
  • Calamintha dufouri Sennen
  • Calamintha einseleana F.W.Schultz
  • Calamintha enriquei Sennen & Pau
  • Calamintha eriocaulis Sennen
  • Calamintha ferreri Sennen
  • Calamintha gillesii Sennen
  • Calamintha glandulosa (Req.) Benth.

and 126 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CANE17. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.