Foraging for Wild Tea

茶是一种简单的浸泡在热水中的植物材料，但不知怎的，它的意义远不止于此。

It can be culture, conversation, or comfort. You can spend your money on tea and tea paraphernalia, if you want. But if you don’t, you can also get yourself a flavorful cuppa for the price of an afternoon stroll. There are wild plants everywhere that can offer something to brew.

For folks looking to cut down on their caffeine consumption, and the amount of garbage they generate with their daily cup, or who just want to enjoy the can’t-find-it-at-any-store flavor of their own land, wild teas are a fascinating world to explore. The variety of plants that can be steeped and brewed into pleasant and healing drinks seems nearly endless, and I hope I can provide you with some easy-to-identify and easy-to-find “weeds” that will live happily on your tea shelf.

This article is meant as a launching point for exploring all these plants, and it won’t give you a complete means of identification if you have never foraged for them. If you find an intriguing new species in this list, take the scientific name along with you and do more research to be sure you identify it correctly in the field.

Furthermore, this is an incomplete list, and I hope that statement comes as exciting news. The plants available to throw in a teapot are incredibly diverse.

12 Wild Tea Leaves to Look For

These 12 are the plants I most commonly reach for, but only because they’re easy to find in the Ozarks. There are guaranteed to be dozens more to discover in your area.

Red Clover Flower and Leaf(Trifolium pratense)

我承认红三叶草是我最喜欢的野生茶之一，所以这就是为什么我必须确保它是这个列表的开头。它下面明亮的粉红色花朵和周围的叶子可以摘下来，新鲜使用或干燥，并保存起来，制成一种甜甜的持续饮料，味道就像在杯子里捕获的初夏。White clover(Trifolium repens)can also be used, but I find its white blossoms aren’t quite as sweet.

Bear in mind that red clover is rich in minerals, which means it can be contaminated with heavy metals if you harvest it from a polluted site.Check out our earlier article on how to forage safely if you’re interested, and be sure to always harvest any wild tea from nontoxic land that hasn’t been sprayed.

Elderflower(Sambucus nigra)

我会在一杯热气腾腾的茶里加接骨木花，如果只是因为它们诗意地出现在热气腾腾的杯口，但它们也有一种令人愉快的味道。甜如蜜，花香四溢，茶的色泽和香味都很细腻。冷敷和热敷都很有效。我特别喜欢用柠檬香和接骨木花做太阳茶。

When harvesting elderflower, I recommend shaking blossoms free from the umbels rather than plucking them. Granted, you’ll get a few ants and spiders along for the ride, but you’ll end up harvesting the pollinated flower petals, leaving the fertilized, embryonic berries for a second harvest a few months later.

Monarda Leaf and Flower(Monarda spp.)

There are several species of tasty plants in this genus, and all of them are excellent for tea either fresh or dried. In the early spring, spotted beebalm(Monarda punctata), Oswego tea(Monarda didyma), eastern beebalm(Monarda bradburiana), wild bergamot(Monarda fistulosa)and their cousins, send up their aromatic paired leaves. A few weeks later, they’ll throw out beautiful, messy-daisy heads, to the frenzied delight of the bumblebees and butterflies.

Both the leaves and flowers are excellent for tea, but I always recommend harvesting only a third of any given plant. These perennials are food for lots of other creatures, and the sight of them in a field is worth prolonging. In the mug,Monardarelatives are aromatic and warming with spicy notes of oregano and mint.

Sassafras Leaf and Root(Sassafras albidum)

Sassafras has gotten a bad rap as a dangerous plant due to someFDA studieson the carcinogenic properties of safrole, a compound found in the roots. Even though the studies were done with concentrated amounts of pure safrole fed to rats rather than the complex brew created by brewing the whole roots into tea, the studies inspired fear. Folks heard “sassafras causes cancer” rather than “artificial preparations of pure safrole administered over a long period of time can hurt a rat” and have feared it ever since.

Seeing that neither you nor I are a rat, and the traditional preparation of whole sassafras root is not a concentrated pure isolate of safrole, I suggest that these cautions have been overblown. I instead encourage you to enjoy sassafras tea any time you’d like just as indigenous people, pioneers, and mountain folk have for hundreds of years. I havewell-knownforagers whoback me upon that assertion, so you don’t have totake my word for it.

This potently aromatic tree offers three different options for your brewing pleasure. First, there’s the spring leaf buds and twigs. Harvest these lightly, as they are meant to become leaves in the later spring, and plucking too many will harm the tree. Second, the leaves themselves. Sassafras leaves lack safrole, so if you’re still worried about those studies despite my efforts, you can harvest them without worry. You can even snack on the newly emerged, tender leaves if you want. They taste unexpectedly like a certain loopy, fruity breakfast cereal.

Finally, tea can be brewed from the sassafras roots. You’ll have to kill a tree in order to gain this tea ingredient, so be sure to choose your victim thoughtfully. Usually, you can find a stand of several small trees clumped together and thin one out. After scrubbing the sweet, spicy roots, chop them in chunks and boil them in water for several minutes to extract a rich, root beer-like tea. The traditional preparation includes boiling (not steeping) the roots. It gives the best flavor, and there’s wisdom in it:Safrole isn’t heat-stable.

Blackberry Leaf(Rubus spp.)

在晚春的时候，黑莓和它们的表亲，黑莓，会放出一种特殊的不带刺的叶子。When the deeply fluted, new leaves of the various members of theRubusgenus first emerge, they are downy soft and can be harvested with a bare hand. These fresh leaves make a wonderful tea, and can be harvested with abandon — whatever you pluck will be regrown quickly.

Through the rest of the year, leaves are good for picking as long as they are green. Bear in mind, however, that fully developed leaves aren’t as tender as they were in the spring, and are instead, equipped with those distinctive thorns and prickles of their own. The prickles don’t matter once they’re in the kettle, of course, but getting them to the kettle in the first place will be a bit of a stabby undertaking.

Blackberry leaf tea is bracing, pleasantly bitter, and has a faint overtone of berry. I enjoy this tea blended with red clover in the dead of winter. It makes the cold seem a bit further away.

New Jersey Tea Leaf(Ceanothus americanus)

With “tea” in the name, it’s easy to guess that this perennial shrub is no stranger to the teapot. These drought tolerant plants played an important role in the Revolutionary War when they were discovered to be similar in taste and character to imported, over-taxed teas.

正如它的名字，这种灌木的叶子可以制成一种非常好的茶。新鲜采摘并冲泡后，我发现它们的品性与青草绿茶相似。Dried and cured, they yield a black tea flavor.

Mulberry Leaf(Morus spp.)

Mulberries of both the native and Asian variety grow pretty much across the United States from coast-to-coast, offering free berries, and for those who know their secret, ample leaves to collect. You can use them either fresh, dried, or powdered, and their taste is pleasantly vegetal with a hint of berry-like sweetness.This tea is so well liked that it’s sold commercially.

Strawberry Leaf(Fragaria vesca)

Strawberries are ashort-lived spring treasure, appearing like edible rubies, and then disappearing. But the leaves of these spreading plants are evergreen, offering you the chance to harvest tea nearly year-round. Strawberry leaves dry nicely, taking on a silvery hue due to the downy hairs on their undersides. When brewed, they produce a pleasant flavor that is reminiscent of their juicy fruit, yet undeniably green and leafy. It’s good enough to brew as-is, but also blends nicely with other plants in this list.

Wood Sorrel Leaf and Flower(Oxalis spp.)

如果你喜欢在茶中加入柠檬，可以在茶中加入一些酢浆草的叶子和花。这些常见的院子杂草有一种令人愉快的明亮，酸的味道，填补了当地寻找的柑橘角色。我必须承认我总是用新鲜的茶叶，所以我不能确定它们作为干茶的可行性。即便如此，我认为它们最好是作为补充，而不是作为基础。

Self-Heal Leaf and Flower(Prunella vulgaris)

We’ve mentioned self-heal a while back in an earlier article onmaking your own healing salve. This generous healing plant is entirely edible, making it a surprising member of your tea shelf. Self-heal flowers and leaves don’t have much aroma when fresh, but when dried and brewed into a tea, they lend a special maltiness that can make a flat tea taste more “round.”

Dandelion Flower(Taraxacum officinale)

我们之前有一篇完整的文章，介绍了用各种方法将蒲公英泡在阳光明媚的茶中，所以我将指导你。But I would be remiss if I neglect to throw their bright, easy-to-find flowers into our good-for-tea lineup.

American Pennyroyal Leaf(Hedeoma pulegioides)

If you’re in the region where American pennyroyal flourishes, you’ve likely found it with your nose before your hands. This low-growing member of the mint family is small, but mighty. We go into greater detail about foraging for and drying the pungent and petite plant in our earlier article onForaging for Wild Mints.

My favorite combination featuring pennyroyal isn’t completely wild, but worth sharing. Combine 3 parts dried pennyroyal with 1 part fenugreek seed and 1 part fennel seed. When brewed, gently sweeten with honey, and blend with milk. It may look a bit like dishwater, but the flavor more than compensates. It is my favorite goodnight drink.

Brewing Wild Tea

If you’ve only ever made tea with a teabag, a handful of fresh or dried plant material may seem a bit awkward. Thankfully, it’s easy to translate that bouquet of foraged findings into a warm, sippable cup.

First, gently rise your plants — especially the flowers — in a quick spritz of water. You’ll often find a stowaway spider or ant, and that’s not something anyone wants in their mug.

Second, place the plants in a large pot. Cover with water and bring to a gentle simmer (except in the case of sassafras root, for which you want a rolling boil). Turn off the heat, cover, let sit for four minutes, and you’re ready to go.

用滤茶器或筛子将泡好的茶倒入你最喜欢的杯子中，如果喜欢的话可以加些蜂蜜，抿一口，放松一下。

So that’s my favorite assortment of wild tea plants, but there are hundreds more to explore, combine, and preserve. Share your favorite findings and fixings in the comments below.