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CeylonCookingAuthentic • Sri Lankan • Recipes

Herbal and Wellness

Ranawara Flower Tea (Dried Senna Flowers)

Ceylon CookingNo reviews yet

Whole dried ranawara flowers and buds, the bright yellow cup you find at every roadside stall.

  • Whole dried blooms and buds, not sachet dust
  • Brews a clear yellow, lightly sweet cup
  • Naturally caffeine free
  • A daily afternoon drink across the dry zone
  • Sun-dried and hand-sorted
$10

Available to pre-orderSKU: CC-RAN-FLW

Size: 50g

  • Carefully packed and shipped to your door
  • 14-day replacement on damaged items
  • Secure checkout

Description

Ranawara (Senna auriculata) dried whole, flowers and buds together, for the golden herbal tea sold from flasks at bus halts and drunk at home in the afternoon. No leaf, no stalk, no tea bag dust. Steep a spoonful and the water turns clear yellow with a light, hay-sweet taste.

Ranawara is the yellow that lights up dry-zone scrub. The bush flowers almost year round, and the blooms get picked, spread out and dried until they curl into papery little twists.

The tea is not really about flavour in the way a Ceylon black tea is. It is light, a bit sweet, faintly like hay in the sun, and it is drunk hot in the afternoon or cooled and taken through a long dry day. In many households it is the cup you make when somebody has been out in the heat too long.

Buy it as whole flowers rather than a blended tea bag. You can see exactly what you are steeping, and the difference between whole dried blooms and the sweepings that go into cheap sachets is obvious the moment you open the pouch.

How to Use

  • Steep a teaspoon in boiling water for 5 minutes
  • Chill it and drink it through a hot afternoon
  • Brew a jug and add a strip of pandan leaf
  • Blend with belimal for a rounder herbal pot

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Frequently Asked

None. It is a flower infusion with no tea leaf in it at all, so it will not keep anybody awake. That is part of why it is the afternoon and evening cup in so many houses.

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