Each issue of Materia Viva begins with an aromatic material and follows it the way one follows a trail: not only the scent, but the landscape, the history, the gestures, the images and the words that material carries with it.
This time the thread leads to Black Mitcham peppermint (Mentha × piperita), the variety born in the fields of Mitcham, south of London, where for two centuries mint growing shaped the landscape, the work and even the street names. A plant with a singular fate: being a sterile hybrid, it sets no fertile seed and propagates only by cutting. Every Black Mitcham plant is, quite literally, the living continuation of one and the same individual — an unbroken green thread running through centuries and through wars.
In the summer of 2026 this issue was accessioned as an archival source by the Wandle Industrial Museum, as documentation of the historic mint cultivation of the Mitcham area.
The issue moves through the Mitcham fields and their memory, the English distilleries, and the rescue of the variety during the First World War — a history, and a plant, with a good many surprises in store.
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