Rose geranium
A South African pelargonium whose leaves smell strongly of roses, grown around the Mediterranean for perfumery and infused in Morocco, Egypt and Greece. It is a leaf that tastes of a flower, which is unusual enough to be worth the confusion the name causes.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Pelargonium graveolens
- Family
- Geraniaceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique; cultivated in Egypt, Morocco, Réunion and China
- Drunk in
- Morocco, Egypt, Greece, Réunion
Character
Rose-scented with a green leafy edge that no actual rose has, and slightly bitter if pushed. One leaf in a pot of mint tea is the traditional dose.
Notes: rose, green, citrus
History
Brought to Europe from the Cape in the seventeenth century and grown at Grasse for perfume from the nineteenth, where it substituted for rose oil at a fraction of the cost. Egyptian and Réunion cultivation both developed to serve the French perfume industry rather than any drinking trade.
How it is drunk
A leaf is dropped into mint tea in parts of Morocco and Egypt, and into Greek spoon sweets and syrups. It is almost never the main component of a drink and is used the way a bay leaf is — one leaf, for aroma.
Production
Grown for distillation more than for drying, and the leaf sold for infusion is a small by-stream. Fresh leaves are what the traditions actually use; dried material loses a good deal of the rose note.
Preparation
Infusion · Blended with tea
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 90–95 °C · 4 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
Not a geranium in the botanical sense — Pelargonium and Geranium are different genera, and the garden bedding geranium is neither scented nor useful here. Dozens of scented pelargonium cultivars exist and only some smell of rose.
Common mistakes
- Buying dried when the tradition uses fresh. Most of the aroma does not survive drying.
Related botanicals
Comparisons
- Rose geranium vs rose — A leaf that tastes of a flower against the flower itself. Rose geranium was grown at Grasse precisely because it substituted for rose oil at a fraction of the cost, and it is not quite the same thing.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Pelargonium graveolens L'Hér. — 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 Rose geranium 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.