Ka'yr

The ka'yr plant, also known as Mandalorian mint or on Corellia as reefmint, was a water plant that occurred on Mandalore and its colonies. It had an aroma and flavor profile similar to menthol, an oil extract produced by the mentha plant genus, which was exceedingly more commonplace in the galactic community than ka'yr.

Many Mandalorian villages trained divers to find and pick reefmint along river beds, who were known as kaya'cepa (reefmint divers). In villages that were less focused on warrior culture, these divers were often honored just as much as warriors as they often faced the river's predatory wildlife, the rampant pathogens, and the risk of drowning to acquire a seemingly unimportant plant. Kaya'cepa was a historically a very popular career in some settlements along the Kelita river.

Description and history
Found in the orange reefs that lined some of Mandalore's last surviving river valleys, reefmint took the appearance of a green-colored stalk that protruded roughly six to eight inches from its roots, and ended in a small "bed" of leaves that surrounded a sphere-shaped appendage. Inside of said appendage was the plant's value; its potent oil, which was primarily used in the fermentation process for Mandalorian tobacco, resulting in a tobacco with a flavor similar to the menthol cigarettes commonly sold in the Core Worlds. Conditions surrounding reefmint development meant that it could not be artificially cultivated, and could only be allowed to occur naturally - reefmints often grew in "patches" of up to 10,000 plants lining the river floor surrounding the reefs, though usually less than 10% of plants per patch contained oil of sufficient potency.

Historically, tobacco treated with reefmint was commonly smoked during outbreaks of kurya'seyra ("tooth-rot"), a pathogen found on Mandalore and Concordia that, while not often fatal, led to various oral disorders in Humans such as tooth decay and gingivitis; this "special" tobacco was smoked to numb the mouth from the pain caused by tooth-rot and may have later led to the discovery of other plants that led to the invention of the menthol cigarette. One common legend for said discovery was when Republic diplomats during the New Sith Wars shared a tobacco pipe with a Mandalorian chieftain, and learned that it was very different than the tobacco the diplomats were used to back in the Corusca sector. They returned to Coruscant with samples of this tobacco and, upon learning that plants of similar aromas and flavors were abundant in the galaxy (common mint, peppermint, etc.), quickly took to producing their own menthol-flavored tobacco that became increasingly popular with soldiers and civilians alike across Republic space over the centuries.

It was later learned that this oil, when processed, also had numbing and cooling effects when applied to bruises, damaged muscles, and minor lacerations - companies jumped on this opportunity and soon the reefmint became a primary ingredient in many muscle pain relief ointments sold in certain Outer Rim and Mid Rim pharmacies. When too much was applied to an exposed wound or directly ingested/inhaled in sufficient amounts, however, the user could suffer from blood poisoning or, if ingested/inhalted, heart and lung failure (supplemented by inflammation and often ulceration of the respiratory system). When the assassination of an Imperial governor of an Inner Rim penal colony in 17 BBY was linked to Mandalorian assassins armed with darts tipped in toxic amounts of reefmint oil, the plant (and products related to it, such as the medical ointments) were illegalized within Imperial space and categorized reefmint as both a "narcotic" and a "weaponized toxin". Reefmint remained popular on Mandalore as a traditional medicine, though was destroyed whereever it was discovered by Imperial military personnel.

Reefmint eventually rose in black market value sometime around the Galactic Civil War, leading a pirate gang to raid a flotilla of Imperial transports that were inexplicably carrying several tons of confiscated reefmint out of the Mandalore sector; Rebel intelligence agents later learned that these transports were bringing the specimens to research facilities in the Core Worlds to be used in prototype chemical weapons, and the pirates that attacked the transports were subsequently commended by Rebel High Command for inadvertently intercepting what could have been another Imperial superweapon.