English: Apple-mint growing beside cycle path. Apple-mint (Mentha × villosa) is quite common, and can be found naturalized (self-perpetuating) on rough or waste ground. It is a hybrid of the introduced species Spear Mint (M. spicata) and the native Round-leaved Mint (M. suaveolens).

The mints are "taxonomically difficult", and "the group involving M. spicata, M. suaveolens, and their hybrids with each other and with the non-British M. longifolia, are particularly difficult, especially owing to the great variation of M. spicata, which is itself derived from M. longifolia × M. suaveolens .... Hybrids (especially M. × villosa) can be very variable, showing many combinations of characters not always connected by intermediates, but they do not exactly duplicate the combinations shown by any of the species." [Stace, "New Flora of the British Isles"].

The hybrid Apple-mint is therefore very variable both in appearance and in scent. The example shown here had a strong spearmint odour, which was quite noticeable even from the adjacent stretch of path: 1449530; it appears to be the typical Apple-mint grown in gardens (Mentha × villosa var. alopecuroides), and so may originally have arisen from a "garden escape".