A Short History of Herbal Tea
From ancient apothecaries to the modern wellness aisle — how botanical infusions travelled the world.
The history of herbal tea is, at its heart, the history of humans paying attention to plants. Long before anyone wrote a herbalist's manual, people noticed that certain leaves steeped in hot water produced a drink that tasted pleasant, warmed the body on a cold morning, or eased the discomforts of an ordinary life. That observation, repeated across every inhabited continent, gave us a tradition that is thousands of years old and still very much alive.
Tracing that history is a little like following a river upstream: the further back you go, the more it branches into streams and tributaries — Chinese and Egyptian written records, Roman military notebooks, Indian Ayurvedic texts, the gardens of medieval monasteries, the trade routes that carried spices from one hemisphere to another. No single origin story covers all of it.
What this guide offers is a broad narrative: the key moments, the cultural contexts, and the gradual transformation of herbal infusion from domestic necessity to global wellness category. It is a story with genuine richness, and understanding it makes the cup in your hand feel a little more connected to the world.
Traditional uses
The earliest documented evidence of plant-based infusions comes from ancient China. According to a well-established tradition — though the earliest accounts are legendary rather than historical — the Chinese emperor Shennong encountered the properties of tea when leaves fell into his boiling water around 2700 BCE. Whether or not that particular story is accurate, we know from reliable archaeological evidence that plant infusions were part of Chinese culture by the time the first herbal compendium, the Shennong Bencao Jing, was compiled — probably during the Han dynasty, roughly two thousand years ago. This text documents hundreds of plants and their observed properties, including many that are still used in herbal teas today.
In ancient Egypt, papyri from roughly 1550 BCE describe complex botanical preparations. Egyptian physicians used coriander, fennel, thyme and juniper — all plants still found in herbal teas — in therapeutic preparations, alongside more exotic ingredients. The Egyptians also preserved elaborate tomb gardens containing herbs, suggesting that botanical knowledge was highly valued and carefully transmitted.
In ancient Greece and Rome, physicians like Hippocrates and Dioscorides catalogued hundreds of plants and their preparation methods. Dioscorides' De Materia Medica, written in the first century CE, was the most widely used medical text in Europe for more than a thousand years. It describes dozens of plants prepared as infusions, decoctions and poultices — the direct ancestors of the methods we use today.
In India, the Ayurvedic tradition had developed a sophisticated herbal system by roughly 600 BCE, centred on plants like tulsi (holy basil), ginger, turmeric, and ashwagandha. Ayurvedic texts describe precise preparation methods for herbal infusions, including the distinction between hot and cold preparations and the importance of combining ingredients to balance their properties. This tradition remains a living practice today.
Medieval European herbalism was shaped by monastery culture. From around the sixth century, Benedictine and later Cistercian monasteries became the main repositories of botanical knowledge in Western Europe, maintaining physic gardens with dozens of herbs for both culinary and medicinal use. Figures like Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) wrote extensively about plants and their uses, drawing on Classical texts and practical monastic experience. Her writings mention chamomile, fennel, lavender and many other herbs still familiar to modern tea drinkers.
The great age of exploration from the fifteenth century onwards brought a dramatic expansion of the European botanical palette. Traders and explorers returning from the Americas, Africa and Asia brought back plants previously unknown in Europe: cacao, vanilla, allspice, hibiscus, and later rooibos and mate. At the same time, European spice trade routes had been carrying ginger, cinnamon, cardamom and pepper into European kitchens for centuries — these spices became integral to the warming herbal drinks of cold-climate countries.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw herbal tea shift gradually from domestic necessity and medical practice into commercial product. The rise of packaged goods, the development of the tea bag (first introduced around 1908 in the United States), and the growth of natural health movements all played a part. By the late twentieth century, "herbal tea" had become a distinct commercial category, with global brands, specialist retailers and an extraordinary range of products from every corner of the world.
Today, herbal tea sits at the intersection of tradition and trend. The plants — chamomile, ginger, peppermint, rooibos — have not changed. The methods are fundamentally the same as those described by Dioscorides or in the monastery herbals. What has changed is the language around them and, sometimes, the level of evidence we expect before we make claims about them. The honest cup of herbal tea remains what it always was: a simple, pleasurable, caffeine-free preparation from the plant world, with a history longer than almost any other drink.
Interesting facts
- China's Shennong Bencao Jing, one of the world's oldest herbal compendia, documents hundreds of plants including many still used in herbal tea today.
- Dioscorides' De Materia Medica (1st century CE) described the preparation of dozens of plant infusions and remained an authoritative European medical text for over a thousand years.
- Medieval monastery physic gardens were the main European repositories of botanical knowledge from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century.
- Rooibos, now one of the world's most popular herbal teas, was first commercially cultivated only in the early twentieth century, though indigenous Khoisan people had used the plant for generations.
- The commercial tea bag, which transformed herbal tea accessibility, was accidentally invented in the United States around 1908 when a merchant sent samples in small silk bags.
- Hibiscus tea — known as agua de jamaica in Mexico and karkadé in Egypt and Sudan — is drunk across tropical and subtropical regions worldwide and was traded along African and Middle Eastern routes for centuries.
- Ayurvedic texts from ancient India describe ginger, turmeric and tulsi preparations in detail — traditions that are still followed in essentially the same form today.
Research highlights
The history of herbal tea is well documented from multiple angles: botanical history, medical history, cultural history and the history of trade. For reliable general reading, university library databases and botanical gardens (many of which publish accessible histories of their plant collections) are excellent starting points.
Be cautious of popular books that present a single cultural lineage — Chinese, European or Ayurvedic — as the "true" origin of herbal medicine. The honest story is genuinely multi-stranded, and the most interesting parts often lie at the points of cultural exchange rather than in any single tradition.
How it compares
| Era | Region / culture | Key development |
|---|---|---|
| c.2700 BCE (legendary) | China | Traditional origin story of tea discovery; documented herbal knowledge follows by Han dynasty |
| c.1550 BCE | Egypt | Ebers Papyrus documents botanical preparations including herbs still used in tea today |
| c.600 BCE onward | India | Ayurvedic tradition systematises herbal preparation, including ginger, turmeric and tulsi |
| 1st century CE | Rome / Greece | Dioscorides' <em>De Materia Medica</em> catalogues hundreds of botanical preparations |
| 6th–12th century | Medieval Europe | Monastery physic gardens become centres of herbal knowledge; key texts like Hildegard of Bingen |
| 15th–18th century | Global trade routes | Spices, hibiscus, rooibos and New World herbs enter European herbal repertoire |
| 19th century | Europe and USA | Commercial herbal products and patent medicines grow; botanical science begins to separate from folk use |
| c.1908 | USA | Tea bag format invented; herbal tea becomes an accessible consumer product |
| Late 20th–21st century | Global | Herbal tea becomes a global wellness category; plant science informs (and sometimes corrects) traditional claims |