Flowering tea or blooming tea () consists of a bundle of dried

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of south-western China and nor ...

leaves wrapped around one or more dried

flower Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...

s. These are made by binding tea leaves and flowers together into a bulb, then setting them to dry. When steeped, the bundle expands and unfurls in a process that emulates a blooming flower,"On Food: Stop and savor the flowering teas"
Hsiao-Ching Chou,

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. Th ...

, May 1, 2007. and the flowers inside emerge as the centerpiece. Typically they are sourced from the

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

province of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

."The Cup that Still Cheers"
Caterer and Hotelkeeper, 20 October 2005. Flowers commonly used in flowering teas include globe amaranth,

chrysanthemum Chrysanthemums ( ), sometimes called mums or chrysanths, are flowering plants in the Asteraceae family. They are native to East Asia and northeastern Europe. Most species originate from East Asia, and the center of diversity is in China. Co ...

jasmine Jasmine (botanical name: ''Jasminum'', pronounced ) is a genus of shrubs and vines in the olive family of Oleaceae. It contains around 200 species native to tropical and warm temperate regions of Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania. Jasmines are wid ...

lily ''Lilium'' ( ) is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs, all with large and often prominent flowers. Lilies are a group of flowering plants which are important in culture and literature in much of the world. Most species are ...

hibiscus ''Hibiscus'' is a genus of flowering plants in the Malva, mallow family, Malvaceae. The genus is quite large, comprising List of Hibiscus species, several hundred species that are Native plant, native to warm temperate, Subtropics, subtropical ...

, and

osmanthus ''Osmanthus'' is a genus of about 30 species of flowering plants in the family Oleaceae. Most of the species are native to eastern Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, etc.) with a few species from the Caucasus, New Cale ...

. Flowering tea in its current form was developed in China in the 1980s, and first became popular in Western countries in the early 2000s."What is Flowering Tea?"
WiseGEEK Some sources state that the general concept of bundled tea leaves is several centuries old. Chinese Tea 07

Flowering tea is generally served in containers made of glass or similar transparent materials so that the flowering effect can be seen. The bundles can usually be reused two or three times without the tea becoming bitter.

References

{{teas Chinese tea Green tea Flower teas