Lavender
The dried flower bud of a Mediterranean shrub, used sparingly in drinks because it is exceptionally strong. Culinary lavender is a specific narrow-leaved species; the ornamental lavandin planted for hedging is a hybrid with far more camphor and is unpleasant to drink.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Lavandula angustifolia
- Family
- Lamiaceae
- Part used
- Flower
- Origin
- Northeastern Spain, southern France and Italy
- Drunk in
- Provence, Bulgaria, England
Character
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.
Notes: lavender, camphor, honey
History
Named from the Latin for washing, and used in Roman bathing before it was ever drunk. Provençal cultivation for perfume oil from the nineteenth century is what created the modern supply, and drinking lavender is a by-product of an industry built for scent.
How it is drunk
Blended into herbes de Provence and into French tisanes, usually with other flowers rather than alone. It appears in Middle Eastern and North African drinks in small quantities, and in modern cafés as a syrup rather than an infusion.
Production
Buds are cut just before full flower, when the oil content peaks, and dried in bundles hung in the dark. Bulgaria now grows more than France by volume, and the two are graded and priced separately.
Preparation
Infusion · Blended with tea
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.
What gets confused
Lavandin is widely sold as lavender and is a different hybrid grown for oil yield. Its camphor content makes it harsh in a cup, which is why so many people conclude they dislike lavender.
Common mistakes
- Using it in the quantity you would use any other flower. Lavender is measured in pinches.
Related botanicals
- Rose — Two flowers used sparingly and easily overdone, and both grown primarily for perfume oil rather than for drinking.
- Rose — Both sold as 'floral tea' with the species unstated, and lavandin is sold as lavender.
- Magnolia bud — Cool camphorous florals that overwhelm anything they are blended with at ordinary quantities.
Comparisons
- Chamomile vs lavender — Two flowers sold side by side as floral infusions, and the practical difference is not flavour but quantity. One takes a spoonful and the other takes a pinch, and treating them alike is why lavender has a reputation for tasting of soap.
- Lavender vs magnolia bud — Two cool camphorous florals that overwhelm anything blended with them at ordinary quantities. Both are pinch-scale botanicals and both have a reputation for tasting medicinal, earned the same way.
Guides
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Lavandula angustifolia Mill. — 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 Lavender 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.