Gambian tea bush
Also known as bush tea, thé de Gambie, Lippia multiflora, aglala, kanhoun, tchagara
Quick answer
A tall aromatic shrub of West and Central Africa whose leaves and flower heads are picked wild, dried and crumbled into sauces in Benin, and drunk as a tea in Ivory Coast. It is a Lippia, a relative of koseret and Mexican oregano, and its smell differs from one population to the next.
- Tastes of
- aromatic, minty
- Heat
- Scoville does not apply
Other names
What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.
aglàla
Fon and Mahi — Central Benin
Fon speakers also gave nyenya, and Mahi speakers aklala sê.
kanhoun
Idatcha — Central Benin
Tchabè speakers gave the same word doubled, and Nago speakers a doubled kinhoun; both explained the name as referring to its pleasant flavour.
tchagara
Ifè — Central Benin
Explained by the informants as "mint flavour". Itcha speakers gave tchagà.
thé de Gambie
French
bunsurun fadama
Hausa
Given with a second Hausa name, godon kada, in two of the sources.
bulukutu
Kikongo
The Beninese names are those recorded from 218 informants in 2016, with the meanings the informants gave. The others are listed in a 2025 review, which also gives names in Akan, Ga and Ewe that are not repeated here.
Flavour and aroma
Aromatic, and not one smell. Speakers of Ifè in Benin explained their name for it as "mint flavour", and Nago and Tchabè speakers explained theirs as a pleasant flavour. Chemists who distilled eleven samples in Angola found oils so different from one another that they sorted them into separate types. No tasting panel was found.
Bluish-green leaves and whitish flowers on the living plant.
Heat
Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent
No heat.
- Limonene — Named first among the main constituents of eleven oils distilled from plants collected in Angola. Taken from the abstract of that study; no percentage was read.(what limonene is)
- Oil constituents that differ by population — Across eleven Angolan oils the authors name limonene, piperitenone, neral, citral, elemol, p-cymene, tagetone and artemisia ketone as the main constituents; one oil was led by verbenone. Which led differed by sample. Instrumental results, and not from the plants used in Benin.
Pairings
Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.
Other spices and blends
Sesame seed
GoodThe commonest way of using the herb that informants in central Benin described: the young shoots are crushed and mixed with the other seasoning and with crushed sesame or groundnut to flavour a sauce. Sesame is the seed the survey names first.
How: Young shoots crushed with sesame into the seasoning of a sauce
One zone of one country, recorded in 2016. The catalogue has no page for Beninese cooking, so no cuisine is given.
Preparation and use
Crush the young shoots with the rest of the seasoning, or dry the leaves and flower heads and crumble them over the sauce.
A sauce herb in central Benin, fresh or dried, and a tea elsewhere. The fresh shoots are crushed into the seasoning of a sauce with sesame or groundnut; the dried leaf and the dried flower head are sprinkled over it. No source read names a particular dish.
Storage and freshness
| Form | Good for | Conditions | Fridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Powder | Not established | Cool, dark, dry and closed. | — |
Quality is not the same as safety
Nothing read says how long the dried herb keeps. Leaf that has taken up moisture and shows mould should be discarded.
Forms
These forms differ enough to need separate answers: treating them as interchangeable produces a dish that is wrong.
Fresh young shoots
Young shoots crushed and mixed with other seasoning and with crushed sesame or groundnut to flavour a sauce.
Dried leaf powder
Leaves dried and reduced to a powder that is sprinkled over a sauce.
Dried flower heads
Flower heads dried and sprinkled over a sauce whole or crushed.
Commonly confused with gambian tea bush
Direct comparisons, each with the difference that actually changes what you cook.
Botany
Verbenaceae
The verbena family, not the mint family that holds thyme, basil and true oregano.
Young shoots, leaves and flower heads are the parts used in food. The informants in Benin also named the stem, the root and the whole plant, for other purposes.
A perennial aromatic shrub with more or less woody stems, growing 2.7 to 4 m tall, with large, oblong, bluish-green leaves and whitish flowers in conical heads at the tips of the branches.
Commonly confused with
The Ethiopian Lippia, a different species of the same genus. Both are dried leaves used as seasoning, on opposite sides of the continent and in different ways: koseret is infused into butter, this one is crumbled into sauce.
Another Lippia used as a dried herb. No source read compares the two.
The better-known aromatic leaf of West African sauces, and a basil. The two are different plants from different families.
How it is grown
The plant, how it is propagated and farmed, what threatens the crop, and where it is produced now. Crop diseases here are plant health, not food safety.
Young shoots and leaves, and the flower heads, picked from a shrub that grows 2.7 to 4 m tall. In central Benin the leaves are used fresh or dried to a powder and the flower heads dried.
Recorded as a wild spice in the Sudano-Guinean zone of Benin, where informants placed it mainly in savanna, home gardens, fields, natural forest or wetland.
One of five wild spices that a 2018 study put first for conservation in the Sudano-Guinean zone of Benin, by four ranking methods. The people it interviewed thought wild spices were declining there and blamed farming, grazing and drought.
Where it comes from and how it is made
Not stated outright in the sources read. They record the plant in use in Benin, Ivory Coast and Angola, and a 2025 review gives it names in Hausa, Akan, Ga, Ewe and Kikongo.
- Benin (The Sudano-Guinean zone, from Dassa to Bembèrèkè) — use or gathering documented here. Where its use as a seasoning is documented in detail.
- Ivory Coast — use or gathering documented here. Used there as a tea and as a condiment, according to a paper that cites Ivorian work.
- Angola — use or gathering documented here. Eleven samples from two provinces were analysed in a study published in 2020.
Young shoots, leaves and flower heads are picked from the shrub.
- Picking — Young shoots, leaves and flower heads are picked.
- Drying — Leaves are dried and reduced to powder; flower heads are dried and kept whole or crushed.
Gathered from the wild; the Beninese study treats it as a wild spice throughout. Its informants also reported it in home gardens and fields, and one of the names they gave means a plant with a scented flower brought from Accra. The people asked thought wild spices in general were becoming scarcer, and blamed farming, grazing and drought.
In central Benin it was one of the species informants placed mainly in savanna, home gardens, fields, natural forest or wetland, in a zone with 1,100 to 1,300 mm of rain a year.
Buying and quality
Used both ways in Benin: the leaf as a powder, the flower head whole or crushed.
Culture
Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.
Central Benin
In a survey of 218 people from the sociolinguistic groups of central Benin in 2016, this was the second most used of fourteen wild spices, and the authors call its fresh young leaves a well-appreciated aromatic spice in all three districts studied. Three uses account for nearly all the food reports: young shoots crushed with other seasoning and with crushed sesame or groundnut for a sauce; dried leaves powdered and sprinkled on the sauce; and dried flower heads sprinkled on it whole or crushed. A few people boiled the leaves or flowers with seasoning for spiced meat, and a few drank the dried leaf as tea.
- Young shoots crushed with sesame or groundnut into sauce
- Dried leaf powder sprinkled over sauce
- Dried flower heads sprinkled over sauce
Ivory Coast
Used in place of tea and as a condiment, in one sentence of a chemistry paper that cites Ivorian studies not read here.
- Drunk as a tea
- Used as a condiment
What it is called
- Mahi: aklala sê
What we do not know
Published openly. A gap we have named is more useful than a gap we have filled with plausible prose.
Not yet established for gambian tea bush:
- Propagation
- Archaeological evidence
- Historical timeline
- Ceremonial use
- Traditional medicinal context
- Regulatory limits
- Traditional uses
Its history. No source read documents the history of the plant as a seasoning.