In 1730 the physician Thomas Short wrote down a story about sage. The Dutch, he said, carried a good store of dried sage on their second voyage to China and exchanged it there for tea, three or four pounds of tea for one pound of sage, the Chinese calling it a wonderful European herb with as many virtues as they gave their own leaf. Short was writing long after the voyages and had never been to China, so the trade is best told as a story.
Osmanthus went the other direction. The tree is native from Assam and the Himalayas across to Japan, and it is the city flower of Guilin, whose name means the forest of sweet osmanthus. It flowers in autumn, in time for the Mid-Autumn Festival, when osmanthus wine is poured at family tables. In Chinese kitchens the flowers are infused together with green or black tea leaves.
Tulsi is holy basil, and among its Indian names are the Queen of Herbs and the Incomparable One. Papaya came the long way round: domesticated in Mesoamerica, carried to the Old World by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, and grown now above all in India, which raised more than a third of the world's crop in 2024.
Ayurvedic Kapha Balance, Organic is the one with the sage in it, with fennel, licorice and black pepper over rooibos. Ayurvedic Total Body, Organic carries the osmanthus among rose, calendula and two mints. Tulsi Multi is the courtyard plant with papaya and apple, Pomegranate Tulsi, Organic sets the same leaf against elderberries and currants, and Forever Young, Organic is green tea with rosehips and hibiscus.
