What is in the category
Cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove, star anise, fennel, turmeric and liquorice root. Botanically these are barks, seeds, rhizomes and roots rather than leaves or flowers, and that structural fact governs everything about how they are prepared.
Rarely drunk alone
Spices are usually components rather than drinks in their own right. Masala chai is the best-known example — a decoction of black tea, milk, sugar and whole spices with no fixed recipe and enormous regional and household variation. Kashmiri noon chai, Middle Eastern spiced teas and mulled preparations across Europe follow the same pattern: the spice sits inside a preparation rather than being the preparation. Ginger and cinnamon are the two most often taken alone.
Why they need a decoction
Dense material does not give up its content to a five-minute steep. Barks, roots and seeds want simmering — ten to twenty minutes in water at or near a boil — which is a decoction rather than an infusion. Whole spice cracked just before use is markedly better than ground: ground spice makes the drink gritty and cloudy, and having been exposed to air it has usually lost much of its aroma already. This is the one herbal category where the preparation method is not a matter of preference.
The limitation, stated plainly
Spices carry more traditional-use literature and more modern marketing than any other group here, and TeaHQ has assessed none of it. Two things are worth flagging for when the records are built: liquorice root has documented safety considerations that will require a sourced safety block, and turmeric attracts a very large volume of health claims that this catalogue will not reproduce without retrieved evidence.