Herbal Teas for Long-Term Wellness

The Rose Valley of Bulgaria, on a morning at the end of May. The pickers are in the rows between five and ten o'clock, while the dew is still on the flowers, and Kazanlak has held a festival for the harvest since 1903. The rose there is the damask, and it is grown for oil.

Athenaeus, quoting Socrates of Rhodes, describes the banquets Cleopatra laid on for Mark Antony at Tarsus in 41 BC: gold plate, gems, hangings of purple and gold. The rose petals strewn deep across the floor are a later addition to the telling. The flower itself, Rosa gallica, was among the first roses brought into cultivation in central Europe, and until the nineteenth century the most important one grown.

Iran does it by still. Golāb is gol and āb, rose and water; the best is reckoned to come from Qamsar, near Kashan, where the golābgirān, the picking and the distilling, runs through April and May, and people travel to watch it. Petals are food across a wide band of the world: rose water goes into gulab jamun, Turkish delight, nougat and baklava, and in India the petals themselves are cooked down with sugar as gulkand.

Rose Petals, Organic is the dried flower on its own, Rosa gallica. Ayurvedic Total Body, Organic puts rose among rooibos, both mints, rosehip, ginger, hibiscus and calendula. Hibiscus, Organic is the sour red one, Nettle, Organic the plain leaf, and Red Raspberry Leaf, Organic a single leaf drunk by itself.