10 Honeybush Tea Seeds - Cyclopia subternata - Indigenous - Buy Seeds For Shrubs From South Africa

Cyclopia subternata Seeds

Cyclopia, better known by the common name Honeybush, or Heuningbos in Afrikaans, is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae, of the subfamily Faboideae. The description was published by Étienne Pierre Ventenat in 1808. The name Ibbetsonia, published two years later, is regarded as a synonym of this genus. The leaves of honeybush are commonly used to make herbal teas. It grows only in small areas in the southwest and southeast of South Africa and has many similarities with rooibos. Honeybush is so named because the flowers smell of honey. The taste of honeybush tea is similar to that of rooibos but a little sweeter. In some rural districts it used to be common practice to keep a kettle of honeybush tea infusing on the stove ready for drinking while scenting the whole house — unlike tea prepared from Camellia sinensis, the product does not turn bitter with long-term simmering.

Most of South Africa’s honeybush crop comes from people harvesting wild-growing honeybush – especially Cyclopia intermedia (“bergtee”). A small, but growing number of farmers grow specific species, such as Cyclopia subternata (“vleitee”) and Cyclopia genistoides (“kustee”, also known as coastal tea) commercially.