Boar Mint is a magical ingredient that is a kind of herb. It is commonly used for antidotes and healing.
Description[]
An aromatic green, perennial herb. Boar Mint can be told apart from other mints by the long, coarse, brown hairs that shoot up from along its roots and overground spreader shoots. The stems and leaves are often a deep green and sometimes have pinkish tips to their serrated leaves. It has a sharp peppermint flavor. When it flowers, it has a budding head with hundreds of tiny pink flowers that is pretty but has a rather repulsive scent best masked by the peppermint of the leaves.
Magical Properties[]
While not all potions with these effects may use Boar-Mint as an ingredient, these are traits commonly ascribed to the herb:
- Insecticide
- Antivenom
- Anti-nausea and calming
- Endurance
- Earth
- Healing
- Alertness
- Memory
- Hospitality
- Hope
- Prosperity
- Wisdom and Insight
- Cooling and Ice
Habitat[]
It prefers areas with moist soil, so can be found in meadows, low-lying fields, and temperate forests. It often overtakes the area it is in and grows into enormous bushes, in which truffles are often found.
How to Collect[]
Trim the leaves off individually, ideally before the flowers bloom. The blooms drain much of the sweetness and some of the magic from the leaves.
How to Prepare[]
It can be used fresh, dried, or even frozen! Dried mint should be kept in an airtight glass container in a cool, dark place. Most sold in apothecaries is dried.
Gardening[]
Boar Mint is a fast-growing and stubbornly invasive plant that can spread via runners along the ground, and quickly will form into enormous green bushy plants. It will overtake a garden bed if not trimmed back regularly! Stem cuttings will root easily into soil or hydroponics, making it easy to transplant. It prefers a rich and moist soil. It can be grown in containers. It needs to be trimmed back each year when the stems get longer and the leaves shorter.
Most gardeners will trim off the flower heads before they bloom, as the blooms reduce the potency of the leaves.
It can be grown indoors in pots easily for use in winter.
Known potions using Boar Mint[]
- Greater Antidote
- Greater Luck
- Calming Elixir
- Fox's Cunning
- ???