What plant does wintergreen (mint-flavor) come from?

Question

I tried to google it but got a botanical response that referred to evergreens and other useless information to my question.

I don't think wintergreen is part of the mint family of plants (peppermint/spearmint) but I could be wrong. Are oils added to these mints to produce the flavor?

Answer 1

oil of wintergreen's main flavor compontent is methyl salicylate, it is present in wintergreens like birch and spirea and most of the oil of wintergreen comes from a type of birch, most wintergreen flavors in food also use some, mint for the Menthol and other flavors it contains to round out the taste

Answer 2

Sweet birch or eastern teaberry are the botanical sources (you were right, by the way), but nowadays it is produced by esterification of salicylic acid with methyl alcohol.  

See article below. Good luck!

Answer 3

wintergreen is from wintergreen mint, a kind of mint like spearmint, etc.