Wild chrysanthemum
A small-headed wild chrysanthemum sold dried in China as ye ju hua, and a genuinely different species from the large cultivated flower sold as ju hua. It is not a lower grade of the same plant: the cultivated chrysanthemum is a hybrid to which this species contributed, and the two are traded, priced and drunk separately.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Chrysanthemum indicum
- Family
- Asteraceae
- Part used
- Flower
- Origin
- China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and India — hillside, verge and scrub
- Drunk in
- Guangdong, Guangxi, Zhejiang, Anhui
Character
Markedly bitter, green and slightly camphorous, with none of the honeyed sweetness that makes hangbaiju easy to drink. Sugar is close to universal wherever it is drunk alone.
Notes: green herb, camphor, chamomile, hay
History
The Chinese trade has distinguished the wild flower from the cultivated one for a very long time, and the distinction survives in the market names: hangbaiju, gongju and taiju are cultivated grades with district names attached, while ye ju hua is simply the wild one. The cultivated plant is a complex hybrid known only in cultivation, and this species is recorded as one of its parents.
How it is drunk
Sold in Chinese herb shops and supermarkets as a separate item from the cultivated grades and priced well below them. It is drunk in southern China in summer, usually with rock sugar or honey to carry the bitterness, and it goes into the Cantonese multi-flower drinks where several dried flowers are simmered together.
Production
Small heads are dried whole and stay small — a centimetre or less across, yellow-brown rather than white or pale gold. Size and colour are the fastest way to tell the wild flower from a cultivated one in a jar, and the cultivated grades are two to three times the diameter.
Preparation
Infusion · Decoction
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
A packet labelled only “chrysanthemum tea” is almost always the cultivated hybrid. Chrysanthemum ×morifolium is recorded by taxonomic authority as a complex hybrid involving this species among others, and as known only in cultivation with no wild distribution at all — which is why a wild-collected flower cannot be that plant.
Common mistakes
- Buying it expecting the sweet honeyed cup of hangbaiju. It is a different species and a considerably harder drink.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Chrysanthemum ×morifolium Ramat. — 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 Wild chrysanthemum 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.