White champaca
An intensely scented white flower of southern China and mainland South-East Asia, used to scent tea in the way jasmine is and, in smaller quantities, infused on its own. It is a magnolia in current taxonomy after a long career in the genus Michelia, and it is a different plant and a different product from the magnolia bud of the Chinese herbal trade.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Magnolia × alba
- Family
- Magnoliaceae
- Part used
- Flower
- Origin
- Of cultivated origin and generally treated as a hybrid with no wild range; grown across southern China, Taiwan, Vietnam and South-East Asia
- Drunk in
- Guangdong, Fujian, Taiwan, Vietnam
Character
Heavily floral and creamier than jasmine, with a green stem note underneath and a bitterness that arrives quickly if the dose is generous. Like lavender, it is measured in pinches and is unpleasant in spoonfuls.
Notes: magnolia, jasmine, ripe pear, green stem
History
Planted as a courtyard and street tree across Guangdong, Fujian and Taiwan, where the flowers are picked at dawn and sold threaded on wire as a personal or household scent. Using it to scent tea follows the jasmine method and the same trade, and it has never approached jasmine in volume — it is a regional speciality rather than an export category.
How it is drunk
Sold in Guangdong and Taiwan as bai lan hua cha, either as the dried flower or as a green tea scented with it. In Vietnam ngọc lan is sold at temple gates and market stalls; in Hong Kong and Ho Chi Minh City the strung flowers hang in cars and doorways. The drinking use sits well behind the scenting use everywhere it is grown.
Production
Flowers are picked before dawn and used while still closed, because the aroma is at its peak in the unopened bud and collapses within a day of opening. For scenting they go in fresh; for infusion they are shade-dried, and dried material loses aroma faster than jasmine does, which is why it is sold in small quantities.
Preparation
Infusion · Blended with tea
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 85–90 °C · 3 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
A Chinese herbal packet marked “magnolia” almost always means xin yi hua, the unopened bud of Magnolia denudata, which TeaHQ holds separately and which is a different part of a different species. Older literature and much of the trade use Michelia alba; the plant has also been sold as champaca, which properly names the orange-flowered Magnolia champaca.
Common mistakes
- Using it in jasmine quantities. It carries further and turns soapy sooner.
- Buying dried flower that has lost its scent — this material ages faster than most.
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 White champaca 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.