Herbs and Herbal Supplements

The fastest way to get this range wrong is to treat every packet the same way. Bark and leaf want different heat and different patience, and the capsules skip the kitchen altogether. Here is how the shelf actually breaks down.

What you'll find in our herb range

Loose bark and root arrives shredded, in the bigger packs: Mulungu (Erythrina mulungu) at 80g, Muira Puama (Ptychopetalum olacoides) at 50g, valerian and catuaba at 80g. Dried leaf and flower comes in 20 to 50g bags, because leaf is bulky and you use less per cup. Then there are milled organic powders (matcha, nettle, amla, harad), the raw cacao family from Ecuador drops to Peruvian paste, and the Zamnesia capsule line for anyone who would rather not brew anything at all. Worth knowing before you click: ashwagandha appears twice here, once as 50g of powder and once as a packet of 20 seeds you plant. They are not interchangeable.

Calming and sleep herbs

This is the busiest corner. Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) is the daisy-family flower that has been in teapots since ancient Egypt, and 50g goes a long way. Hops flowers are the one that surprises people who came from the seed shop: Humulus lupulus sits in the Cannabaceae family, same family as cannabis, and what you get is dried female cones, yellowish-green and properly bitter. Valerian root is the third classic, and our own valerian page is blunt about it pairing with hops, so a bag of each gives you more options than two bags of one. Mulungu bark and lemon balm round the group out.

Energising and stimulating herbs

At the other end of the day sits kola nut (Cola nitida). Caffeine was identified in it in 1865 and theobromine later, the same compound that turns up in chocolate. Guarana and yerba mate keep it company, and raw cacao runs alongside as the food-shaped version of the same idea. Muira puama, catuaba and damiana are the South American tonics, traditionally prepared as a brewed bark drink rather than eaten. Adaptogens is the umbrella term people use for ashwagandha, rhodiola and maca, all of which are here in both loose and capsule form.

How to brew and store loose herbs

Bark is dense and woody, so hot water on its own pulls very little out of it. It needs a real simmer with the lid on. Leaf and flower are the opposite and turn bitter if you cook them. These numbers come straight off our own product pages, not off a chart.

One honest warning about mulungu: those twenty minutes are not padding. Cut it to five and you get faintly aniseed hot water. Storage is cool, dry, dark and sealed, and it matters more for leaf than for bark. The 20g leaf bags are genuinely small, about a week of evening cups, so size up on anything you already know you like. A tea and herb infuser saves you straining bark grit out of the mug afterwards.

Why buy your herbs here

Because the alternative is usually a marketplace listing with no idea which part of the plant is in the bag. Everything here is named down to the binomial, packed in-house and posted in plain packaging. If you would rather shop by outcome than by plant, sleep, relax and energy collect the finished products from across the shop, herbal or not. Our Good Night Herbs Tea is a decent map of what pairs well: spearmint, chamomile blossom, melissa, blackberry leaf, strawberry leaf, rose and orange blossom in one bag. Buying those loose and blending them yourself works out cheaper per cup, but the ready blend is the one we would hand someone on a first order.