Whole Dried Lotus FlowerNelumbo nucifera Gaertn.

Delivery

Free delivery on every order to UK addresses. Orders are dispatched once payment clears.

Whole dried blooms are very light for their volume, so the 500 g and 1 kg sizes travel as bulky parcels. That does not change the price you pay.

Returns

You have 14 days from delivery to tell us you want to return an order, and a further 14 days to send it back.

• Packs must be unopened and seals intact. This is a food product, and once a seal is broken it cannot be resold or returned on hygiene grounds.
• Refunds go back to the account you paid from, within 14 days of us receiving the goods.
• Return postage is yours to cover unless the item arrived damaged, incorrect, or not as described — in which case we cover it.
• Damaged in transit? Photograph it before returning anything and email hello@herbalhurleys.co.uk. We will sort it without a return trip where we can.

None of this affects your statutory rights.

Nelumbo nucifera is an aquatic perennial that roots in the mud of ponds, lakes and slow rivers and pushes its leaves and flowers clear of the water on long stalks.

It sits in its own botanical family, Nelumbonaceae — which is worth pausing on, because almost everyone gets this wrong. The sacred lotus is not a water lily. It is not in Nymphaeaceae. The resemblance is superficial convergence: two unrelated lineages arriving at the same solution for living in shallow water.

The leaves are peltate — the stalk joins in the centre of the blade rather than at the edge, like a parasol. A mature leaf can span the width of a dinner table. The flower opens over several mornings and closes each afternoon, and when the petals fall it leaves behind a distinctive flat-topped seed head that looks like a shower rose.

Almost every part of the plant is put to use somewhere in Asia. The rhizome is a vegetable. The seeds are eaten fresh, dried, candied and ground. The leaf wraps food. The petals are eaten and infused. The stamens are dried and blended into tea.

Names you will see on this plant

Older English sources call it the "Egyptian bean" or "Chinese water lily" — both misnomers. It is also a different species from blue lotus, Nymphaea caerulea. Every batch we pack is verified as Nelumbo nucifera.

Few plants have been written about, painted, carved and eaten as consistently, and for as long, as the sacred lotus.

It has been cultivated in China for something close to five millennia, and virtually every part of the plant — seed, rhizome, leaf, stalk, petal, anther, pericarp and receptacle — has a documented place in the food and materia medica traditions of the region. Lotus cultivation in the great basins of north-eastern China evidently predates the written record for the area.

Its cultural weight is heavier still. In Hindu and Buddhist iconography the lotus is the standard emblem of purity emerging unstained — the plant that grows out of pond silt and opens perfectly clean above it. That single image carries into architecture, textiles, coinage and language across most of southern and eastern Asia. It is the national flower of both India and Vietnam.

In the kitchen, the leaf has an old and specific job: it is the wrapper. Glutinous rice parcels steamed in lotus leaf — lo mai gai in Cantonese dim sum, and the many regional forms of zongzi — take a distinct grassy perfume from the leaf during steaming. The leaf is not merely a container; it is edible and it is an ingredient.

Hot infusion

1. One flower per pot Around 300–400 ml. For a single mug, break a bloom and use roughly half.
2. Water off the boil About 80 °C, as you would treat a white tea. A rolling boil flattens the aroma.
3. Steep 4–6 minutes Longer does no harm. There is nothing harsh waiting at the far end.
4. Re-steep A whole bloom will give a second, softer infusion. Many people prefer it.

Cold infusion & iced

1. Two blooms per litre Cold water straight from the tap.
2. Refrigerate overnight Eight hours or so gives a very clean floral water.
3. Strain and serve Over ice, with lemon or cucumber. It also makes an elegant base for a spritz.
4. Blending Keep lotus to roughly 10–15% by weight in any blend, or the base will bury it.

Dried botanicals are an easy category to be careless in. Species get substituted, harvests get blended, and "lotus" on a label can mean four different plants.

• Species verified on intake. Every batch is confirmed as Nelumbo nucifera before it is packed. We do not accept mixed-genus lots, and we do not substitute Nymphaea for Nelumbo.
• Single origin, single harvest. Thai grown, and each pack is traceable to one harvest window rather than pooled across seasons.
• Nothing added. No anti-caking agents, no colour, no added aroma, no oil sprayed on to make the leaf glossy.
• Sorted by hand. Broken and fragmentary blooms are graded out before packing rather than averaged in.

On natural variation

Lotus is an agricultural crop, not a manufactured product. Colour shifts between cream and dusty rose depending on cultivar, harvest timing and drying conditions. Bloom size and aroma intensity vary between lots.

We do not correct for any of this. A perfectly uniform batch of dried botanical, season after season, is usually a sign that something has been done to it.