Top 10 Flowers for Making Tea

With a multitude of varieties and distinct characteristics, herbal flower teas require a clear understanding of their medicinal properties and health benefits for optimal use.

So, which flowers can be brewed into tea? What are the most common types?

This article lists ten flowers suitable for making tea, including jasmine, roses, carnations, chamomile, marigold, honeysuckle, and chrysanthemums, hoping it can be of assistance to you.

This list primarily ranks flower teas based on their health benefits, medicinal properties, and popularity online. It also takes into consideration various related internet rankings and lists to provide a comprehensive recommendation.

1. Jasmine

Jasmine tea, excellent for warding off the cold and lifting the spirit, is a springtime tea par excellence.

It contains numerous compounds beneficial for human health, such as catechins, vitamin C, A, caffeine, theaflavins, and polyphenols. Jasmine tea also contains over 20 compounds, including substantial amounts of aromatic oils, linalool, nerolidol, and eugenol.

Jasmine tea, processed through a series of steps that take advantage of tea’s unique absorbency and jasmine’s fragrant emission, maintains the robust, refreshing natural taste of green tea while brimming with the fresh and fragrant aroma of jasmine.

2. Rose

Rose tea utilizes red or green tea as its base. Besides roses, other flowers like roses, osmanthus, and modern roses with their sweet and rich fragrances, can also be used to prepare flower tea.

Rose tea can cool down the body, nourish the skin, regulate blood circulation, promote blood circulation, beautify the complexion, and alleviate fatigue. It also helps heal wounds, protect liver and gastrointestinal functions, and long-term consumption can promote metabolism.

3. Carnation

Carnation has beauty-enhancing properties, calms the nerves, quenches thirst, brightens the eyes, reduces inflammation and irritability, moisturizes the throat, aids digestion, and is noticeably effective in treating headaches and toothaches.

Carnation tea has a mildly cool nature, a sweet taste, and acts on the lungs and kidneys, offering benefits of liver balancing and lung moisturizing.

Carnation tea is suitable for brewing with forget-me-nots, violets, roses, and wintersweet, all of which have beauty-enhancing effects.

4. Chamomile

Chamomile can aid sleep, alleviate inflammation and pain, and relieve insomnia caused by neurotic itching. It is also cultivated in large quantities in some parts of China for use in medicine and tea-making.

Drinking chamomile tea can help eliminate toxins from the body, moisturize the skin, relieve stress, and aid sleep. Applying cold, brewed tea bags to the eyes can alleviate eye fatigue and help reduce dark circles.

5. Marigold

Marigolds, containing minerals like phosphorus and vitamin C, primarily utilize their petals.

Marigolds are suitable for single brewing or combined with green tea. Steep a tablespoon of dried marigold petals for about 3-5 minutes to get a golden tea adorned with floating golden petals.

Its fragrance is faint, and its taste is sweet with a hint of bitterness.

Add honey for flavoring if desired. Drinking marigold tea when you have a cold can help reduce fever and cool down the body.

It also has antispasmodic and digestive benefits, making it particularly suitable for people with digestive system ulcers. In addition, it can promote blood circulation. It also helps alleviate alcohol intoxication and is beneficial for liver health.

6. Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle has been esteemed since ancient times as an excellent remedy for clearing heat and detoxifying the body. Its sweet, cool, and aromatic nature cools heat without harming the stomach and dispels pathogenic influences.

Regular intake of honeysuckle infusions or decoctions aids in the treatment and recovery from red eyes caused by wind-heat, sore throat, obesity, liver heat, and hypertension related to liver heat.

7. Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum tea is made from a process of fresh flower picking, sun drying, steaming, and baking. Consuming chrysanthemum or drinking its tea over time promotes longevity.

When brewing chrysanthemum tea, it’s best to use a transparent glass cup, adding four or five flowers and steeping with boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Once the water has cooled slightly, you will notice the tea turning a faint yellow.

Don’t finish it all at once; leave about a third of the tea, add new hot water, steep for a while, and then drink. When drinking chrysanthemum tea, adding a few rock sugars to the cup can make it even sweeter.

8. Osmanthus

Osmanthus tea, made from osmanthus flowers, is a Chinese specialty and a type of flower tea. With its mild fragrance, delicious taste, and bright green broth, it is popular among people.

Osmanthus tea warms and replenishes the yang energy, whitens the skin, detoxifies the body, suppresses cough, promotes sputum, and nourishes the lungs.

It can prevent and treat bad breath, blurred vision, urticaria, duodenal ulcers, and stomach pains caused by coldness in the stomach.

9. Peach Blossom

Peach blossom tea is widely available on the market, which makes it convenient. You can also pick and dry your own in early spring. Winter melon seeds and poplar bark can be steeped in boiling water. Cover the cup to retain the aroma.

After 10 minutes, it’s ready to drink. Drink it like tea, one dose daily. It’s suitable for people with facial dark spots, pregnancy pigmentation, age spots, or those who have darker skin from excessive sun exposure.

10. Magnolia

Magnolia flowers can be eaten or used to scent tea. Magnolia tea is warm and pungent, with a lasting strong fragrance. It harmonizes the Qi, reduces phlegm, and benefits the lungs. It is particularly good with honey.

Magnolia tea is fragrant, rich in taste, and produces a bright yellow broth. It harmonizes Qi, reduces phlegm, benefits the lungs, dispels wind, and clears the sensory organs.

Throughout history, it has been used to treat headaches, nasal congestion, and tooth abscesses.