Greater calamint

Clinopodium grandiflorum is an erect, softly hairy perennial herb of the Lamiaceae family, typically 20 to 50 centimetres tall, growing from a slender creeping rhizome, with square, ascending, sparsely branched stems clothed in fine spreading hairs. The opposite, short-petiolate leaves are broadly ovate to elliptic-ovate, 2 to 6 centimetres long, with a serrate to crenate-serrate margin, an acute apex, a rounded to slightly cordate base and a softly pubescent, conspicuously veined green surface, releasing a strong mint-like, slightly peppery aroma when crushed. The flowers are conspicuously large for the genus, 2 to 4 centimetres long, two-lipped tubular and bright pink to rose-purple, with a hooded upper lip and a three-lobed, often paler lower lip patterned with darker markings; they are borne in loose axillary cymes of one to three blossoms forming a leafy terminal raceme from summer into early autumn. The fruit consists of four small, smooth brown nutlets enclosed in the persistent, two-lipped, ribbed calyx. Native to moist, shaded mountain woodlands, ravines and stream banks of southern and central Europe.