How to read a TeaHQ botanical page

Every botanical page carries the same sections in the same order, and two of them say things most catalogues do not say at all. This is what each is for.

foundational

Identity and plant part

The binomial where it is settled, the family, and which part of the plant is used. The plant part is the most practically useful line on the page: it determines whether you steep or simmer, how long the material keeps, and what to look for buying it.

Character and taste

Flavour, aroma and mouthfeel. Read the taste description rather than the aroma notes if you are deciding whether to buy — the gap between how these plants smell and how they taste is wider than in tea, and jasmine is the extreme case.

History and culture

What is documented and what is traditional, labelled as such. Where an account is a repeated attribution rather than a sourced fact — the Himalayan origin of moringa, the Arab concealment of cinnamon’s source — the page says so instead of asserting it.

Evidence for this page

Whether the botanical name and distribution are checked against an external authority, or whether the page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. Fifty-one of 150 are checked. This block exists because a reader cannot otherwise tell which they are looking at.

The limitation block

The last thing on every page, and the one most catalogues omit. It states either that a safety record exists and is held unpublished, or that TeaHQ makes no safety claim at all — and it says plainly that the absence of a safety note is not a statement that a plant is safe.

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