Definition of "pennyroyal" []

• A Eurasian mint (Mentha pulegium) having small lilac-blue flowers and ovate or nearly orbicular leaves that yield a useful, aromatic oil. (noun)
• An aromatic plant (Hedeoma pulegioides) of eastern North America, having purple-blue flowers and glabrous leaves that yield an oil used as an insect repellent. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The herb we call pennyroyal was the only one I found in abundance, and that only on the brows, where the ground had been partially cleared; vegetation is impossible elsewhere, and it is this circumstance which makes the “eternal forests” of"
• "Well, Jennie and Brighteyes walked on through the woods and sometimes they found huckleberries to eat, or they found pennyroyal, which is a nice plant to smell, and it keeps the mosquitoes away, when they want to stay away."
• "Wild medicinal plants, so important in the rustic materia medica of New England -- such as pennyroyal, for example -- are generally much less aromatic and powerful when cultivated in gardens than when self-sown on meagre soils."