Lemon verbena
A South American shrub carried to Europe in the eighteenth century, now the most-ordered tisane in France under the name verveine. Its lemon aroma is cleaner and less soapy than lemongrass and survives drying better than almost any other citrus-scented leaf.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Aloysia citrodora
- Family
- Verbenaceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay; widely cultivated in the tropics and naturalised across the Mediterranean
- Drunk in
- France, Morocco, Peru, Argentina
Character
Bright clean lemon with almost no bitterness and a slightly sweet finish. Distinctly sharper and less waxy than lemongrass, and it holds up under a long steep.
Notes: lemon, lemon sherbet, green
History
Collected in South America by Spanish botanical expeditions in the 1780s and named for a Spanish princess, which is why a Peruvian shrub carries a French court name. It established in Provence and North Africa quickly and became a café standard in France within a century of arriving.
How it is drunk
Ordered as verveine in French cafés, where it and tilleul are the two tisanes everyone knows by name. In Peru and Ecuador it is hierba luisa, drunk domestically and grown in kitchen gardens; in Morocco it is louisa and goes into mint tea alongside the mint.
Production
Leaves are stripped and dried whole in shade at low temperature, because the aroma is in surface oil glands that heat drives off. Whole leaves that crumble rather than powder are the sign of careful drying; grey-green dust has usually been machine-dried hot.
Preparation
Infusion · Cold infusion · Blended with tea
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 90–95 °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
Confused constantly with vervain, which is a different genus, has no lemon character at all and is strongly bitter. French menus list both, and the two are not substitutes.
Common mistakes
- Buying by the word 'verbena' alone. Half the material sold under it is the bitter one.
Related botanicals
- Vervain — The most reliable mis-sale in European herbal retail. One is a lemon-scented South American shrub, the other a bitter European wayside plant, and both are sold as verbena.
- Lemon myrtle — Clean lemon leaves with no soapiness, differing mainly in strength — one is a pinch and the other a spoonful.
Comparisons
- Lemon verbena vs vervain — The most reliable mis-sale in European herbal retail. One is a lemon-scented South American shrub and the other a firmly bitter European wayside plant, and both are sold as verbena in the same shops.
- Lemon verbena vs lemongrass — Two lemon-scented materials from opposite sides of the world, blended together constantly and rarely distinguished. One is a leaf and one is a grass, and the difference in the cup is cleanliness.
Guides
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Aloysia citrodora Paláu — 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 Lemon verbena 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.