Tulsi
An aromatic basil grown at the doorway of Hindu households and drunk as an infusion across India. Three cultivated types — Rama, Krishna and Vana — differ in leaf colour and in how peppery they taste.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Ocimum tenuiflorum
- Family
- Lamiaceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- The Indian subcontinent and Malesia
- Drunk in
- India, Nepal, Sri Lanka
Character
Peppery and clove-like, closer to a spice than to a leaf, with a drying finish. Quite unlike the sweet basil of Italian cooking despite the shared name.
Notes: clove, pepper, green basil
History
Documented in Sanskrit sources for well over two thousand years and cultivated as a sacred plant rather than a crop. Its commercial trade as a dried drinking herb is a late twentieth-century development layered on top of a domestic and devotional tradition.
How it is drunk
Grown in a raised tulsi vrindavan at the entrance of many Hindu homes and tended daily. It is a devotional plant first, and the drink is a domestic use of something planted for another reason entirely.
Production
Leaves are picked through the growing season and shade-dried. The three types are usually blended in commercial material and sold undifferentiated, which loses the distinction between them.
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
Sold as 'holy basil' alongside culinary basil, which is a different species. The three tulsi types are rarely distinguished on a label.
Related botanicals
Comparisons
- Shiso vs tulsi — Two mint-family leaves that taste of anything but mint, both with religious or seasonal significance, and both quite unlike the basil most people know.
- Basil vs tulsi — Two Ocimum species, one a kitchen herb of possible African origin and the other a religiously significant South Asian plant, and they do not taste alike.
Guides
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Ocimum tenuiflorum L. — 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 Tulsi 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.