Tisane, Infusion, Herbal Tea: What Is Actually in the Cup - Happy Earth Tea

September 27, 2026 Niraj Lama

Tea, Tisane and Herbal Tea: What Is Actually in the Cup

True tea comes from a single plant, Camellia sinensis. Herbal teas, or tisanes, come from almost everything else: leaves, flowers, stems, berries, fruits and roots from hundreds of different plants. They belong to a tradition just as old as tea and far more diverse. Nearly every ancient culture found its own way of steeping plants in hot water.

Early Chinese texts (China being where tea began) include many recipes for medicinal broths made from plants other than Camellia sinensis. In ancient Egypt, the Ebers Papyrus, dating to around 1550 BCE, describes coriander, juniper and fennel steeped in water as remedies. More than 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, healers were boiling remedies of myrrh and other botanicals. In the far north of Europe, people drank infusions of chaga, a mushroom that grows on birch trees.

ic: Papyrus Ebers, Unknown scribe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Some of this history is much closer to home. The Haudenosaunee, whose homelands include the land where our shop now stands, steeped the scarlet-flowered bee balm plant for colds, digestion and fevers. European settlers near the Oswego River learned the practice from them and called it Oswego tea. After the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when drinking imported tea became an act of disloyalty, many colonists turned to Oswego tea instead. For a while, one of America's most patriotic drinks was an herbal infusion that Indigenous people had been brewing all along, a short drive from where we're writing this.

ic: Monarda didyma, Bee Balm or Oswego tea

The biggest difference between herbal teas and true tea is caffeine. Almost all herbal teas are naturally caffeine-free. The notable exceptions are a few plants from the Americas: yerba mate, guayusa and yaupon, which is North America's only native caffeinated plant.

Because so many herbal traditions grew out of healing, it's no surprise that most herbal teas are still linked to wellness today. People reach for chamomile to wind down, peppermint after a heavy meal and ginger when they're under the weather.

Then there are blends made purely for flavor, from dried fruits, flowers and spices. This is where the names get tangled. These are often referred to as tisanes, following the French, who use the word for any infusion that isn't true tea. Lately, many people have started using "botanicals" as an umbrella term for the whole category. We like it, partly because the line between "herbal tea" and "tisane" has always been blurry.

When Happy Earth Tea opened fifteen years ago, we carried only a small selection of herbal teas. Today it's one of our strongest categories, and building it has been a real source of creative joy. It has also brought us back to our roots, which lie as much in herbs as in tea.

ic: Ginger plant. Copyright: Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

My father was a forester, and for as long as I knew him, he loved trees with a relentless passion. After he retired, when I was in college, he and a close friend threw themselves into the study of medicinal plants. He bought stacks of books and pored over them, and the two of them would talk for hours about the virtues of the plants growing around us.

Before him, there was my maternal grandfather, who was something of a village herbalist. He gathered leaves, roots and shoots from the surrounding hills and gave them to ailing neighbors as medicine, accepting a bag of lentils or perhaps a chicken from those who couldn't pay.

The thread continued during the pandemic, when Mary enrolled in Cornell's online course on medicinal plants. We learned a great deal from it, including on several visits to Cornell's medicinal plant garden.

One of our most beloved herbal blends is Holy Ginger, a simple pairing of holy basil and ginger. Almost everyone who tries it loves it, and many tell us it's one of the most "healing" teas they've ever had. It takes me back to my childhood, to neighbors who grew holy basil, which we call tulsi, on a raised pedestal in their courtyard and lit a lamp and incense beside it every day as an offering.

Maybe that's what's really in the cup. Whatever we call it, tea, tisane, herbal tea or botanical, it's the same old human impulse: to walk out into the world, gather what grows there and trust hot water to draw out something good. My grandfather understood that in the hills, my father rediscovered it in his books, and we get to share it across our counter every day. The names will keep shifting. The ritual is much older than any of them, and we think that's worth steeping in.