Butterfly pea
A deep blue flower from a tropical vine, drunk across South-East Asia and used as a natural colouring. Its blue turns violet and then pink as acid is added, which is why it is nearly always served with citrus.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Clitoria ternatea
- Family
- Fabaceae
- Part used
- Flower
- Origin
- Native range not settled; cultivated and naturalised across the tropics
- Drunk in
- Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia
Character
Almost neutral — faintly vegetal and little else. It is drunk for the colour and for what it is mixed with, which is worth saying plainly.
Notes: green bean, faint hay
History
A garden and hedgerow plant across South-East Asia long before it was commercialised. Its recent spread into Western cafés is driven almost entirely by the colour change, which photographs well — a modern trade built on a visual property rather than a flavour one.
How it is drunk
Anchan in Thailand, served iced with lime and sugar. In Malaysia and Singapore bunga telang colours nasi kerabu and kuih. Burmese and Vietnamese cooking use it as a dye as much as a drink.
Production
Flowers are picked fresh daily through the growing season and either used immediately or dried whole. Drying preserves the pigment well, which is unusual among blue plant colours.
Preparation
Infusion · Cold infusion
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
Common mistakes
- Expecting flavour. The colour is the product.
Comparisons
- Blue mallow vs butterfly pea — Both brew blue and both turn pink the moment anything acidic reaches them. The European one predates the Southeast Asian one in European use by centuries and is far less commercially exploited.
Guides
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Clitoria ternatea L. — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Butterfly pea is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.