does mint leaves can be an insect repellant?”
According to the website above: Researchers have discovered a powerfull, natural insect repellent within the leaves of an endangered mint plant in central Florida. Even a whiff of the substance sends ants and other insects fleeing, they report in the February CHEMO-ECOLOGY. Thomas Eisner of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., grew curious about the plant, Diceranda frutescens, while walking through a patch of it at the Archbold Biological Station in Lake Placid, Fla. Its intense scent, resembling that of peppermint oil, filled the air after the biologist’s walk disturbed the plants. A look at the leaves showed they were “remarkably free of insect-inflicted injury,” Eisner says. His colleagues’ chemical analysis of the leaves revealed a new mint oil, which they named trans-pulegol. Moreover, the oil — oil with a dozen other mint oils previously identified in other plants — remains sealed in tiny capsules that act as chemical “grenades,” exploding when insects chew the leaves. This all