Passionflower
The dried flowering top of a North American climbing vine, sold across Europe as passiflore and met far more often inside an evening blend than on its own. The name records seventeenth-century missionary iconography rather than anything about the plant or the drink.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Passiflora incarnata
- Family
- Passifloraceae
- Part used
- Flower, Aerial parts
- Origin
- South-eastern and central United States, north to Pennsylvania and west to Texas; naturalised elsewhere
- Drunk in
- France, Germany, Italy, United States
Character
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.
Notes: hay, cut grass, dry stem
History
Spanish missionaries in the Americas read the flower’s parts as instruments of the Passion — the filamentous corona as the crown of thorns, the three styles as the nails — and the reading passed into Latin as flos passionis and from there into every European language. The species that entered the European drinks trade is this North American one and not the tropical fruiting vine that carries the same name in a greengrocer.
How it is drunk
In France and Germany it is a standard component of the evening tisane blends sold in every supermarket, usually alongside linden, lemon balm or orange blossom, and it is rarely bought alone. In the southern United States the same plant registers as a fruit — the maypop — rather than as anything to drink.
Production
Cut in flower and dried whole with the stems left in, which is why the material in a packet looks like chopped hay with an occasional flower in it. Stem-heavy material is normal for this plant rather than a sign of adulteration, and it is one reason the flavour is so slight.
Preparation
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
Passiflora incarnata is the plant of the drinks trade. Passiflora edulis is the passion fruit of juice, dessert and cordial, and it is a different species with a different use. A packet labelled only “passionflower” rarely states which, and a fruit-scented one is usually flavoured rather than made from the fruit.
Common mistakes
- Expecting it to taste of passion fruit. Nothing about the leaf and flower resembles the fruit of the other species.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. 132 of the 204 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
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 Passionflower 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.