A friend of mine recently went back from Vietnam and brought me a bag of…well, I don’t know the name, and him neither.
He just knows it’s to be used as tea, that it has no caffeine or theanine, and it comes from North Vietnam.
A pic is here: http://i47.tinypic.com/2ccrvoh.jpg
It kinda looks like seeds, or maybe small dried flower buttons.
It smells ok.
Any guesses?
I guess that I’d regard it as a curiosity rather than something to be consumed, no matter how good it smells (suspicions based in part on contamination involving Chinese teas). Unless you’re dealing with a highly reliable source and knowledge of just what’s in the tea, you’re taking a big chance.
Yeah you’re probably right.
I’ll try to get hold of my friend to ask him where exactly did he find it. I have no idea if he bought it or if it’s something his mom gave it to him.
I did prepare a mug of “tea” with it, after having posted, using about a teaspoon of the stuff. I found it ok-to-tasty, but the taste was slight and the water had colored just a bit, so maybe it’s meant to be crushed before adding boiled water, but I’ll stop there the experiment.
Not the faintest clue. And I wouldn’t drink it, either.
WhyNot,
herbalist
It’s called Eugenia tea in English, and trà vối in Vietnamese. I believe it’s related to cloves, and I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t drink some if you like it. It’s supposed to reduce “heat” built up from eating salty or fatty foods.
Quality control, mostly. I have no way of knowing what dried plant matter is, because most of it looks like other dried plant matter. (Smell can assist, but I can’t smell it on the internet.) I don’t know what it’s adulterated with, or whether it was dried to preserve the alkaloids or the alcohols or the phenols or the tannins (different techniques preserve different active constituents) or what the dosing should be.
I mean, say it *is *a relative of cloves (actually, some quick google research suggests that Eugenia Tea IS cloves). Cloves are one of the most commonly adulterated herbs, often being bulked out with stems (useless), “brown” cloves (opened buds which have lost their innards) and “exhausted” cloves (the afterproduct of essential oil production - totally spent and worthless) or even woody stems and sawdust of entirely unrelated plants. Then again, it may be pure good closed clove buds…in which case it’s only safe to use at small doses for a few days, and then you run into tissue irritation and inflammation issues.
I don’t use herbs - in any form, tea, tincture, capsule, pill - unless they’ve been prepared by a person or company I trust, any more than I would use drugs from an unknown source. Sad to say, Vietnam, China and most of India have lost my faith as reliable safe suppliers, especially of unlabeled herbal products.
Oh man thanks! I love the Dope.
Latin names for the stuff: Eugenia Operculata, Cleistocalyx Operculatus, Syzygium nervossum.
Indeed a relative of the clove tree.
You’re welcome! I’m always glad to feel like I’m contributing my little part to the overall awesomeness of this board.
@WhyNot - good answer. I’m sure the vối is, in fact, adulterated with stems, since that’s pretty clear from the picture. Personally though, I can’t imagine living without tea – whether herbal or actual – from China, Viet Nam, or most of India. Well, to each his own!
Oh, I’ll buy from K’an, Giovanni Maciocia, Pacific, Horizon, Dr. Shen’s, Mountain Rose, Laughing LadyBug Botanicals…and probably a few others I can’t think of at the moment. And, of course, I grow and prepare my own, and will buy/trade with people I know who know their stuff. But yes, even when shopping for Chinese Herbs, I prefer to buy American grown and/or packaged, simply because I trust our sanitation and adulteration prevention practices more than I do the terribly unregulated stuff coming out of Asia. Still a crapshoot, but better odds. 
