Blue Lotus Gift Set: Sri Lankan Blue Lotus Tea & Floral Infuser (Gold or Silver)

Sri Lankan blue lotus tea paired with a stainless steel double-flower infuser and cradle, in gold or silver. Everything needed to brew whole-flower blue lotus properly, in one box.

What's included

• Dream blue lotus tea — 113 g of pure Sri Lankan whole dried flowers, grown, harvested and dried by local families. Nothing added.
• Double-flower tea infuser with cradle — stainless steel, ultra-fine mesh, 18 cm, dishwasher safe. Your choice of gold or silver finish.

$36 for the pair, against $41 buying them separately.

Why they belong together

Blue lotus is bulkier than leaf tea. Whole flowers need room to open, and they clog the fine little ball infusers most people own. This one is built for them — and the cradle means you can lift the basket out and rest it somewhere, which matters because blue lotus gives up more on a second steep than most teas do.

It also makes a straightforward gift. The tea is unusual enough to be interesting and gentle enough to be safe to give, and the infuser makes it immediately usable rather than a bag of flowers someone doesn't know what to do with.

How to brew it

• Hot: one to two flowers per cup, water just off the boil, 5 to 10 minutes. It won't turn bitter with a long steep the way leaf tea does.
• Cold: flowers in cool water, refrigerated overnight. Softer and more floral, and the traditional preparation in several lineages.
• As a latte: steep strong, add warm milk. Recipe here.

Blue lotus is traditionally an evening plant, associated with dream and with winding down. Most people drink it before sleep.

About blue lotus

Nymphaea caerulea is Sri Lanka's national flower, and it carries meaning across the Buddhist and Hindu traditions of the region — the water lily rising clean through muddy water is one of the oldest images of the awakening mind. It appears just as prominently in dynastic Egyptian art, held to the nose in tomb paintings and carved into columns.

Across all of these traditions the associations run together: dream, vision, and the threshold between waking and sleeping.

For the fuller account of what research does and doesn't establish about the flower, see the Dream tea listing — we go into the alkaloid pharmacology and its limits there rather than repeat it here.

Common questions

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.