Growing Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa)

Many of you will be familiar with the bright red, fruity tasting hibiscus tea but it is likely that, like me, you didn’t know anything more about it.

Roselle is a species of Hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa) that is native to West Africa. It is a perennial tropical shrub, that has now been widely spread throughout the world. It does grow in more subtropical areas – but often as an annual plant.

Of course I had to try growing it. I bought a couple of seedlings and put them in two different places that I thought might catch enough sun for them to thrive. They were very slow growing but did eventually reach a reasonable size. But it wasn’t until well into autumn that they finally started to develop the much awaited flower buds.

I went out eagerly every day to see how they were progressing. The flowers are really quite gorgeous: opening as a very pale peachy shade and developing over time to a much darker pink.

By late May there were a good crop of flowers on one of the plants but a cold snap meant that the leaves started to drop. One of the plants just gave up altogether but the other seemed to be hanging on sufficiently. Of course right at that point I was due to go to Australia for a couple of weeks so I could only cross my fingers and hope that there would be some calyxes for me to harvest when I got home.

 

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case – none of the flowers had formed the hard bud or ‘fruit’ that meant the calyxes were mature. If they had, I would have then peeled the outer red calyx off and dry it ready to make tea.

I did however harvest the remains of the flowers and buds because I had read that they could still be used to make tea (although without the strong fruity flavour usually associated with hibiscus).

I used them to make a batch of one of my favourite hibiscus flower tea with liquorice root and ginger:
1L boiling water
~ 5 tbsp hibiscus flowers
1 tbsp liquorice root
1 tbsp dried ginger root

Pour the boiling water over the tea ingredients and allow to steep. The flowers extract rapidly into the hot water but the liquorice and ginger extract more slowly. So you can make a light infusion steeping for 5 minutes or leave it an hour or more.

I personally leave it to steep overnight to make a concentrated infusion that I think makes the best use of the plant material. It will keep in the fridge for several days. You can dilute it with hot water or soda or even sip it full strength like a full bodied red wine.

As predicted, the batch that I made with my homegrown hibiscus flowers lacked the rich fruity flavour but the milder version was still quite acceptable. I think it might be a plant to try growing in my greenhouse in future.