Traditions: Herbal Flower Teas

Teas Using Heartsease, Chamomile, Borage, and Yarrow

It's now August and everything is in bloom. This is my favorite and busiest time of year for harvesting and gathering. This morning I wandered the yard and garden with my basket to see which flowers and herbs might be ready for picking.

As I walk with my basket, I am following in the footsteps of generations of mostly women who have done the same thing. Peoples all over the world have been harvesting and making teas from herbs for millennia. They have used them for medicinal and spiritual needs and also for simple enjoyment. Each herb has a unique flavor and use and most have a mystical belief associated with them.

If I had been born a few generations before, not all that long past, I would have learned about these herbs from my mother, grandmother, or aunt. Now, especially since I live in a place new to my family heritage, I rely on multiple books and resources to point the way. Some of my favorite resources include

• Rowan + Sage blog and website

• Gardenia website (A great website to research plant origins and native plant substitutes.)

• Jekka's Herb Cookbook by Jekka McVicar

• Alaska's Wild Plants by Janice Schofield Eaton

• The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North by Beverley Gray

Flowers and herbs starting from the top center are heartsease flowers, catnip, chamomile flowers, lemon balm, borage flowers, peppermint, and yarrow flowers in the middle.

Herbal Flower Teas

In later posts, I'll discuss the variety of mints found in my basket. Today I want to focus on the heartsease, chamomile, borage, and yarrow flowers. All of these flowers are easy to grow, but be warned, most are not native to North America. They should be used in places where you can ensure they will not spread, taking over native vegetation. They are all well-loved by bees and other pollinators, so be careful when harvesting them. I have often found a bee feeding on a borage flower I was about to pinch.

I am not going to give you all the interesting facts about their history and lore. There are so many wonderful articles and resources out there that cover those topics. Reading the history of these herbs is a walk into the far distant past. because heartsease, chamomile, and borage are native to Eurasia, those of us with a Eurasian family heritage would have ancestors who used all of these flowers for medicines, comfort, and protection.

Where is your family heritage from? What plants would your ancestors have used? I hope this post inspires you to dig into your family past and consider how your family was connected to the plants around them. In the meantime, try a few herbal flower teas. I bet you may have some of these flowers growing in your yard or garden right now.

Heartsease

Heartsease (Viola tricolor) or johnny-jump-up flowers make a beautiful blue tea that has a clear, smooth, and fresh taste. The flowers retain much of their color when dried making them a beautiful addition to a tea mixture. I do not bother to separate the green sepals from the flower. It is very difficult to do without destroying the flower and I have not noticed any particularly bitter flavors.

Once you begin growing them, you will notice they will begin appearing everywhere. They are very easy self-seeders that will continue to come back year after year. They are native to Europe and western Asia. In the coming years, I will be attempting to replace this variety with the Alaska violet (Viola landsdorffii).

Chamomile

Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) is a

well-known herb whose flower is aromatic, making a sweet and flowery tasting tea. It is a staple in many of my favorite tea mixtures.

It is also an easy self-seeder. Over time, you will need to do significant thinning to get a few larger plants instead of dozens of little scrawny ones. Although it does grow back easily each year, I have not seen it move around the yard like borage or heartsease.

Borage

Like heartsease, borage (Borago officinalis) also makes a blue tea, but it's more grey than purple. It's flavor is also not as smooth. This does not stop me from using the flowers in my tea mixes, though. Sometimes a little bit of clarifying flavor can be enjoyable.

Like chamomile and heartsease, borage is an easy self-seeder. Where ever you plant borage, you will have many borage plants sprouting the following year.

Luckily, the young borage plants are tasty in salads. Although once they grow larger, their stems become too prickly to eat. Unlike heartsease and chamomile a borage plant can get very large. For this reason, when they are too big to eat in a salad but still relatively small, I dig them up and transplant them into their own little garden so they can mature allowing bees (and me) to enjoy the flowers. Over time, I'm hoping to limit them to a space where they can self-seed to their hearts' content without overrunning other garden and wild spaces. That said, having a borage plant or two around my squash plants has greatly increased my pollination rate. Borage flowers are a significant bee attractant.

Yarrow

Yarrow flowers make a light yellow, slightly bitter tea. It is not unpleasantly bitter, but compared to the smooth flavors of borage and heartsease and the sweet flavor of chamomile, it stands out.

Unlike borage, chamomile, and heartsease, yarrow does not sprout from last year's seeds but from its hardy root system. Yarrow is a hardy perennial that is native to Alaska and most of the northern hemisphere. I love having it in the garden. It is hardy, blooms for months, and attracts pollinators. Plus, it does a great job of staying put, although it will slowly spread over time.

It's Never Too Late to Explore Flower Teas

Regardless of when you are reading this, you can start sourcing, growing, harvesting, or enjoying herbal flower teas. To get started with tasting them now, I suggest checking your local natural foods store or on-line sources. If you are lucky enough to have a gardener friend, ask to see if they have some of these plants growing in their yard or garden. It's highly likely that they do. I do think its best to try them individually first. That way you can taste them on their own and then mix them according to what you like or are in the mood for.

If you decide to grow them, be sure to start early. Consider where you will want them to grow. Remember, all of these are either easy self-seeders or are perennial. Where you plant them will have long-term consequences. If it's spring, don't delay. Most flowers and herbs need a significant head start and should be started from seed weeks before your last frost date. You could also try winter sowing them. Because they are either self-seeders or perennial, their seeds are very cold tolerant.

However you decide to try herbal flower teas, it's important to remember to enjoy the journey. Herbal lore has a rich history. Once you start growing, using, and sharing these teas, you become part of that history. Our great-great-grandmothers would be proud!

Happy Tea Drinking!