You can make teas -- plant parts soaked in steamy water until flavorful compounds are released -- from many plant kinds. If you have a pine tree in your backyard, you can make pine-needle tea, which on a very cold, cloudy day when you're a little congested and blah, can taste pretty good. Some teas, though, are better than others, some are awful, and some are medicinal, maybe toxic. In Mexico, most herbs sold for flavoral teas are from plants native elsewhere, but a few were enjoyed long before Europeans arrived.

Part of big pile of dried jamaica flowers at a mercado in Mérida, Yucatán; copyright free image courtesy of Sharon Hahn Darlin made available through Wikimedia Commons.

Jamaica tea, pronounced "ha-MY-ca," sometimes is called hibiscus or roselle tea; often US tea drinkers know it as Celestial Seasoning's Red Zinger. It's made from the flowers of a large bush, Hibiscus sabdariffa, originally from the Philippines, but introduced into Mexico by Spanish galleons around 1565.

Lemon grass for sale; copyright free image courtesy of "Judgefloro" made available through Wikimedia Commons.

Té limón, or lemon grass tea, made from a fragrant grass species from tropical southern Asia, and in Mexico often seen growing next to lowland homes, looking exactly like a waist-high clump of weedy fescue grass; it's Cymbopogon citratus, and a few of its leaves steeped in steamy water makes a great herbal tea, with or without sweetener; in mercados usually the leaves are stripped from the plant and tied into bundles as seen at the right. The tea also is said to sooth the stomachache, a migraine headache, the cough and even for calming the nerves.

Spearmint

Yerba buena, or mint tea are names applied to teas using various mint or mint-like species. Spearmint tea, besides tasting good, often is thought of as aiding digestion. In Mexican mercados spearmint tea often is called té verde, meaning "green tea," and may be bought either dried or fresh. Just add fresh or dried mint to steamy water, let set awhile, sweeten to taste, and you have a fine tea.

Loose, dried chamomile flower heads; copyright free image courtesy of "ianakoz" made available through Wikimedia Commons.

Manzanilla, or chamomile tea is made from the flowering heads of Matricaria chamomilla, a member of the Aster/Sunflower or Composite Family, and is from Eurasia. At the right, the Chamomile plant's dried, ready-to-soak flowering heads' white petal-like ray florets and spherical heads of tiny, yellow, close-packed disk florets easy to see. Mexicans, like everyone else, regard this as a calming, sleep enhancing tea.