Nope. Neither coffee nor Styrax. Two more hints: 1) Found in no more than 25% of Canadian households. 2) Not the part of the plant that would be used.
I think another couple hints would be fair. 1) It's something you generally purchase or grow for another. 2) the oil extracted from the plant contains a chemical (the active ingredient, actually), which has been found to be roughly 10 times more effective than DEET at repelling mosquitos, but as far as I know, has not been used this way commercially to date. It would likely attract other critters, though.
I had never heard that it was an anathema to mosquitoes. Don't know which would be worse, though, Deet or it's odor. :) When you said it was in a lot of tropical households, was that the reason, to repel mosquitoes? het
Nepeta cataria, catnip or catmint Catnip buds research (includes an image of the seeds - not easy to find online!) Catnip via Wikipedia: "Research from the Iowa State University has found that the oil extracted from Nepeta cataria contains nepetalactone, which has been found to be nearly 10 times more effective at repelling mosquitos than DEET." Google Answers thread with stats for households with cats. I'm embarrassed to admit that I gave the wrong percentage for Canadian households - I was repeating from what I remembered, which was wrong (the 25% figure came from the number above in the table, which is 25% for the UK. Canada actually has 38%). So, you can blame me if you thought it might be catnip, but then knew that the number of cat-owning households was much higher in Canada.
Harry, didn't see your reply before I finished writing mine. As you can guess from what I linked to, my percentages were strictly based off of the number of cat-owning households.
