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Flowers

Flowers are the group most often bought for how they look and most often disappointing for how they taste. Drying temperature decides nearly everything: too hot and the aromatics that justified picking them are gone before they reach a packet. Several of them are also the group's chief source of confusion, because the trade names borrow freely across unrelated plants.

39 recordsPicked at bloom and dried whole, where the shape usually survives into the cup.

All 39

  • Blue mallow
    Very mild with a noticeably slippery mouthfeel, which is more distinctive than the flavour. The colour is the reason it is in the packet.
  • Butterfly pea
    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.
  • Calendula
    Faintly resinous and slightly bitter, with far more visual presence than flavour. In a blend it is doing colour work rather than taste work.
  • Chamomile
    Sweet, faintly apple-like and gently bitter at the finish. Whole flowers give a rounder cup than the crushed material in bags, which extracts fast and turns bitter.
  • Cherry blossom
    Salty first, then a faint almond-cherry note from the coumarin the preserving develops. The visual moment when the flower reopens is at least half of the point.
  • Chinese rosebud
    Lighter and greener than damask rose, with less perfume and more of a fresh apple edge. Over-steeped it turns tannic and drying, which damask rose does less readily.
  • Chrysanthemum
    Sweet and mild with a slight bitterness at the edge, and a cooling quality in the finish. Whole flowers open in the glass and are traditionally watched as they do.
  • Corn poppy
    Mild and faintly bitter with very little aroma of its own. In Turkey it is drunk sweetened and with lemon, which turns the violet cup a bright red; the drink is bought for the colour and for what is added to it.
  • Cornflower
    Essentially neutral, with a faint hay note at high concentration. It is in the packet so that the packet looks like something.
  • Elderflower
    Delicately muscat and faintly honeyed, and considerably fainter dried than fresh. Cold infusion holds more of the aroma than hot water does.
  • Gardenia
    Enormously perfumed and quite bitter, with a curious savoury note as it cools that puts some people off entirely. Used in small quantities in blends for that reason.
  • Heather
    Dry, faintly honeyed and quite tannic, with a resinous note that reads as the smell of moorland to anyone who knows it. Nothing like the sweetness of heather honey.
  • Hibiscus
    Sharply sour and deeply coloured, closer to cranberry than to anything floral. Sugar is near-universal wherever it is drunk, and it is a different drink without it.
  • Hollyhock
    Very mild and faintly sweet, with the soft slippery body all the mallows share. What it contributes to a cup is colour and texture rather than flavour, and it is almost always blended.
  • Honeysuckle
    Nectar-sweet on the nose and slightly bitter in the cup, which catches out anyone expecting the smell to arrive as taste. Cold-brewed it loses most of the bitterness.
  • Hop flower
    Very bitter and resinous, with a citrus-pine top note that varies enormously by variety. Almost nobody drinks it alone twice without blending it down.
  • Immortelle
    Strongly aromatic, resinous and distinctly bitter, with the warm savoury note that gives the plant its garden name. A small quantity and a short steep; it dominates anything it is blended with.
  • Iranian borage
    Very mild, faintly sweet and slightly slippery in the mouth, with far less flavour than its colour promises. Lemon is added as much for what it does to the colour as for taste.
  • Jasmine
    Enormous aroma and very little flavour, which surprises people who expect the taste to match the scent. Brewed alone the buds are faintly sweet and slightly green; the character everybody recognises comes from the tea underneath.
  • Lavender
    Intensely floral and slightly soapy if over-used, with a cooling camphor edge. A pinch is the correct quantity and a spoonful is a mistake.
  • Linden flower
    Distinctly honeyed and slightly mucilaginous, giving a rounder mouthfeel than most flower infusions. Almost no bitterness even at long steeps, which is unusual.
  • Lotus
    The stamens give a clean cool perfume; the leaf gives something greener, more astringent and faintly like young bamboo. They share a name and not much else.
  • Magnolia bud
    Perfumed with a distinct cooling camphor note, and more bitter than its scent suggests. Used sparingly in blends for exactly that reason.
  • Meadowsweet
    Almond and hay on the nose, then a dry, tannic and slightly bitter cup that does not follow through on the sweetness. Material with a lot of green stem in it is noticeably more astringent.
  • Mexican marigold
    Clearly aniseed, closer to French tarragon than to any flower, with a green edge behind it. Nothing about the taste suggests the calendula it shares a name with.
  • Orange blossom
    Heavily perfumed and slightly bitter, with the bitterness coming from the green parts of the flower. Dried material is a shadow of the fresh scent.
  • Osmanthus
    Apricot and honey, sweet and light, with almost no body of its own. It works better scenting something else than standing alone.
  • Passionflower
    Grassy and hay-like with almost no sweetness and no floral character at all. In a blend it supplies body and a dry green base; the linden, mint or lemon balm beside it supplies everything a drinker would name.
  • Plum blossom
    Faintly almond-like with a clean green sharpness, and quite bitter if pushed. It is a subtle drink and is easily overwhelmed by anything served alongside it.
  • Red clover
    Gently sweet and hay-like with a faint vanilla note that comes out as the material dries. Very mild, and easily lost in a blend with anything assertive.
  • Roman chamomile
    Sharper and much more bitter than German chamomile, with the same apple aroma sitting over a green, faintly camphorous base. A steep long enough to suit the German kind makes this one hard work.
  • Rose
    Floral and faintly astringent, with a tannic edge from the bud that petals do not have. Blended into black tea it reads as perfume; alone it is drier than people expect.
  • Safflower
    Slightly bitter and hay-like, with none of saffron’s honeyed depth. It gives colour convincingly and flavour not at all, which is exactly why the substitution works visually and fails in the mouth.
  • Saffron
    Honeyed and hay-like with a firm bitterness underneath, and a metallic edge if too much is used. Three or four threads flavour a pot; a pinch ruins it.
  • Snow chrysanthemum
    Sweet and faintly molasses-like, with a deep amber-red liquor from very few flowers. Two or three heads colour a whole cup, which is the first thing anyone notices.
  • Violet
    Powdery and faintly sweet when the material is good, and close to tasteless when it is not. The scent characteristically disappears and returns as you smell it, which is a property of the aroma compounds rather than of your nose.
  • White champaca
    Heavily floral and creamier than jasmine, with a green stem note underneath and a bitterness that arrives quickly if the dose is generous. Like lavender, it is measured in pinches and is unpleasant in spoonfuls.
  • Wild chrysanthemum
    Markedly bitter, green and slightly camphorous, with none of the honeyed sweetness that makes hangbaiju easy to drink. Sugar is close to universal wherever it is drunk alone.
  • Yarrow
    Aromatic and distinctly bitter, with a chamomile-adjacent top note over a much harsher base. Most people meet it as one component of a bitter blend rather than alone.

Commonly confused within this group

  • Hibiscus and Rosehip — Blends of the two are sold under either name. Hibiscus is the deeper red and the sharper.
  • Lavender and Rose — Both sold as 'floral tea' with the species unstated, and lavandin is sold as lavender.
  • Dried apple and Hibiscus — Dried apple is frequently the largest ingredient by weight in a fruit infusion named after something else.
  • Calendula and Mexican marigold — Both are called marigold in English and they are different genera. Calendula is a colour ingredient with almost no flavour; Tagetes lucida tastes strongly of aniseed.
  • Snow chrysanthemum and Chrysanthemum — Sold as a chrysanthemum and is a Coreopsis. It brews deep red-brown where true chrysanthemum brews pale gold, and three flowers make a cup.
  • Safflower and Saffron — The classic saffron adulterant, and it has been for a thousand years. Safflower florets are flat and tongue-shaped; saffron is a trumpet-shaped stigma, and the price gap is roughly a thousandfold.

Guides covering this group

Other groups

Grouping is by the plant part used, which is a fact about the material rather than a judgement about flavour. A plant appears in one group only, so cinnamon is a bark and not a spice here even though every kitchen in the world files it the other way.