Is there such a thing as a peppermint seed?

While cruising through one of my herb books I read that mentha piperata is sterile and must be reproduced from cuttings.   Meanwhile, seeds for this mint are sold all over the internet.   What is everyone's experience here?   What is the truth?

I am currently growing peppermint from seed in a hydroponic setup. A lot of commonly cultivated plants now have male sterility genes in them (e.g. commercial carrots) but that doesn't mean that wilder cultivars don't produce seed. I try to steer clear of the most common cultivars for this reason. I want plants to produce seed and increase their genetic diversity.

There are so many varieties of mint that they had to have come from seeds originally. Plus I keep my mint varieties in big pots and I've still had mint show up in the ground, far enough away to not likely be from a runner, without a root connecting it to the pots, so maybe it's from seed. But I don't know any of this for sure.

Curious fact I just learned (since my curiosity is now awake this subject), peppermint is a hybrid of spearmint and watermint. Both watermint and spearmint grow easily from seed and if you want to grow seed true to type, separate your mints by 300' because they easily hybridize. And that explains my escaping mint because it is a spearmint. My peppermint stays nicely contained in the pot.

Yeah, from what I understand, peppermint is a sterile hybrid, so the only way to get peppermint seeds is to cross the parent species anew...

Ellen Morrow wrote:While cruising through one of my herb books I read that mentha piperata is sterile and must be reproduced from cuttings.   Meanwhile, seeds for this mint are sold all over the internet.   What is everyone's experience here?   What is the truth?

I don't think peppermint grow with seeds, you can probably find one in near nursery

Just looked at my package of 'peppermint' seeds.  What was sold as mentha piperata was just called mint (mentha) on the package.   Oh, well, live and learn...