Yarrow
A flat-topped white or pink umbel of a feathery-leaved meadow plant, gathered across northern Europe and used in blended tisanes. It is aromatic and firmly bitter, and its flowering tops are picked with a few centimetres of leaf attached.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Achillea millefolium
- Family
- Asteraceae
- Part used
- Flower, Aerial parts
- Origin
- Temperate Europe, Asia and North America
- Drunk in
- Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Britain
Character
Aromatic and distinctly bitter, with a chamomile-adjacent top note over a much harsher base. Most people meet it as one component of a bitter blend rather than alone.
Notes: hay, camphor, chamomile
History
One of the plants most consistently named in northern European herbals, and one of the bittering agents used in beer before hops became standard — it appears in gruit recipes alongside bog myrtle and marsh rosemary. Its Latin name credits Achilles, which is a classical attribution rather than a documented one.
How it is drunk
Gathered rather than bought across Germany, Austria and Scandinavia, and drunk in mixed household tisanes rather than alone. Its stalks are the traditional casting implement of the I Ching in China, which is a use with nothing to do with drinking it.
Production
Flowering tops are cut in mid-summer and dried in shade, since sunlight bleaches them and costs the aroma. The material darkens quickly in storage and older stock is visibly grey-brown.
Preparation
Infusion
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
Wild yarrow varies widely in aroma and several closely related Achillea species are gathered under the same name. Cultivated ornamental yarrows are not the drinking plant.
Common mistakes
- Long steeps, which make the bitterness dominant and lose the aromatic top entirely.
Related botanicals
Comparisons
- Yarrow vs heather — Two northern European gathered materials, both drier and more tannic than their honeyed aroma suggests. Neither is a commercial tisane anywhere and both are picked rather than bought.
- Yarrow vs chamomile — Two Asteraceae of the European meadow, one of them the most drunk flower in the world and the other a bitter component nobody drinks alone.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Achillea millefolium 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 Yarrow 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.