Prostanthera incisa, or cut-leaf mintbush, is a shrubby plant native to rocky mountain tops of Eastern Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. It has an attractive purple flower. The leaves are highly aromatic, ovate-lanceolate, 1–3 cm long, and teethed.

There are two recognized varieties:

• P. incisa var. incisa

• P. incisa var. pubescens

Uses

The leaves and green twigs are distilled for their essential oils. The dried leaf of a specific flavoring chemotype

Chemotype

Introduced by Pierre Franchomme in 1975 and formalized in the European Union in 2006 with the adoption of the regulation REACH, a chemotype is a chemically distinct entity in a plant or microorganism, with differences in the composition of the secondary metabolites...

 of P. incisa var. incisa is also sold under the trade name of native mint. However, this can be confusing because Australia also has true native Mentha

Mentha

Mentha is a genus of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae . The species are not clearly distinct and estimates of the number of species varies from 13 to 18. Hybridization between some of the species occurs naturally...

species.

The dried leaf has high free radical scavenging ability.

Cultivation

P. incisa var. incisa is cultivated on a small-scale commercial basis for essential oil production and for bushfood spice. P. incisa prefers well-drained soils and in poorly drained soils it can be susceptible to root-rot. It has reasonable frost tolerance down to -5 degrees celsius. It is a fast growing shrub, and consequently can be harvested within the first year. When pruned back to a height of 50 cm it reshoots readily.

Occasionally this species is confused with the related Prostanthera ovalifolia

Prostanthera ovalifolia

Prostanthera ovalifolia, known as the Oval-leaf Mintbush or Purple Mintbush, is one of about 90 Australian endemic species from the genus Prostanthera. Known as Australian mints or native mints....

.