Butterfly pea flower

Food history and product evidence

Thailand's Food and Drug Administration profiles a producer's dried butterfly-pea flower tea. The product page is dated 2025 and describes fresh flowers being harvested and dried for tea and culinary colouring; it records that product, not when the drink first appeared. The earliest dated culinary use is not established by the sources reviewed here.

Mahidol University's pharmacy information centre describes dried flowers brewed as a beverage and flower colour used in food and drinks in Thailand. These sources establish food and beverage uses, but they do not provide a complete, standardized household recipe with quantities, yield or storage limits.

Botanical identity and ingredient form

Butterfly pea is Clitoria ternatea L., an accepted species in Fabaceae, the legume family. Kew describes it as a climbing perennial and records a native range including Cape Verde, tropical and southern Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula; Thailand is among its introduced range. The Thai name อัญชัน (anchan) is recorded for this species by Thai botanical and pharmacy sources. The ingredient here is the flower, not the plant's seeds, roots or medicinal extracts.

The flowers are blue to violet and may be used fresh or dried. Thailand's FDA describes dried whole flowers as the starting material for the named tea product. Flowers and extracts are not interchangeable: this page does not extend flower-food evidence to concentrated extracts, other plant parts or supplements.

Colour and culinary role

Flower pigments give butterfly-pea preparations an intense blue colour. The 2025 food review describes the pigments as pH-responsive; a colour shift with acidity is a colour response, not evidence of fermentation, preservation or a health effect.

The inspected product sources document use in drinks and culinary colouring. The flower is an aromatic and colour ingredient, not a fermenting culture or an established preservative. The linked nam dok anchan preparation record is a drink; the reviewed evidence does not establish that the flower ferments or preserves it.

Safety and evidence limits

Safety findings depend on the material and intended use. In its 2022 assessment of a notification for dried Clitoria ternatea flowers as a traditional food from a third country, EFSA raised safety objections. It noted reported traditional food-colouring use in Asian countries, but said a traditional history of herbal infusions had not been established and the available information did not exclude risk from cyclotides whose toxicological profile was insufficiently known. This was an assessment of the notified dried-flower material and proposed uses; it does not establish that all flower foods are harmful or that every preparation is safe.

Mahidol University's pharmacy information centre advises caution with strongly concentrated flower drinks for people taking medicines that affect blood clotting, citing a reported antiplatelet effect of the flower constituent ternatin D1. The source does not provide a clinical interaction trial or validated dose, so the clinical significance is uncertain; this is a reported precaution, not proof of an interaction at ordinary food exposure.

A 2025 review says most proposed health effects are supported mainly by preclinical research and calls for further human study to establish efficacy and safety. Antioxidant assays and medicinal claims do not demonstrate clinical benefit. Long-term safety, vulnerable populations and standardized preparation remain unresolved.

Research gaps

The reviewed sources do not establish a single earliest dated culinary use, a complete traditional preparation, serving amounts or home storage instructions.

Safety evidence remains preparation- and dose-specific. The cited EFSA objection concerns a notification for dried flowers and proposed use as an infusion; current authorization in any particular jurisdiction was not independently checked.

No clinical benefit, therapeutic dose, long-term safety profile, food-preservation function or comprehensive allergen profile is established here.