22 Magical Teas, and the Plants from Which they're Made

The following is a list of 22 strange plants used for brewing magical teas. Each entry describes where this plant can be found or how it can be cultivated. Each accompanying image is AI-generated by Wombo's Dream AI.

This was written for Stick for the Spring 2022 Secret Jackalope blogpost exchange. My apologies for the delay.

1. Bartered Tea Tea made from the Il Plagato plant promotes a calm mind and enhances physical dexterity, but only if the leaves are willingly given to the harvester. Stolen leaves are bitter and have a diuretic effect. Such plants are typically willing to part with some leaves in exchange for entertainment, and are known to be especially fond of juggling.

2. Piper Tea The Joan Piper Poppy Plant is notable for its symbiotic relationship with a species of mice. These mice are observed to cultivate the plant in the wild, manually pollinating its flowers, spreading its seeds, and burying small dead animals near the base of the plant (presumably for nutrients). Observation in controlled environments has discovered that the Poppy coordinates the efforts of the mice by emitting a sequence of ultrasonic squeaks. The poppy can be brewed into a tea with a cheezy aroma and mild narcotic effects. At high dosages, drinkers report the ability to speak to rodents, and also a desire to cultivate Joan Piper Poppies.

3. Sad Playwright's Tea Many plants employ pain or disgust as a defense mechanism. Otheh Humaneh, colloquially known as "sad shrub", employs despair. Physical contact, or even sometimes visual contact, with the plant induces a state of tearful sorrow. Many ill-prepared growers of the plant have left their fields unharvested after deciding that the whole venture "just feels pointless". After the plant has been boiled into a tea, the emotional effects diminish in severity while increasing in 'depth', with drinkers of otheh humaneh tea swearing by its ability to induce artistic inspiration.

4. King's Tea King's Tea Trees are very small trees (they must always be referred to as a "tree") which require respect and praise to grow, in addition to the usual inputs of light and water. The leaves smell and taste like leather. When brewed, the resulting tea gives the drinker feelings of superiority and bravery, as well as a supernatural sort of "weather resistance". Imbibe a large amount of King's Tea, and you'll likely be able to survive a lightning strike, but you'll also get the feeling that running around in a lightning storm and shouting challenges to to the gods is a perfectly reasonably thing for someone of your status to do.

5. Vampire's Balm The Lambsblood Bush, created as the byproduct of a high-energy linguistics experiment, is a plant with physical properties mysteriously out of sync with its metaphysical nature. Its fruits, although physically resembling bitter strawberries, count as "flesh" for the purposes of all magical effects (magical identification, ritual component requirements, etc.). Likewise its leaves, when brewed into tea, count as "blood".

6. False Love Potion Crass's Matrimony is a knobbly little succulent which pulses like a beating heart. Its mucilage can be processed into a mildly euphoria inducing beverage with a bizarre side-effect. If two drinkers make eye contact, they'll both be overwhelmed by the desire to marry each other. To clarify, the tea doesn't make people sexually or romantically attracted to each other, it just induces a desire to legally wed. The drink remains popular largely because the effect is too short-lived to cause long-term problems unless imbibed near a courthouse.

7. Ambulatory Tea Ambulo Brambles are hearty shrubs which easily grow in only moderately magical soils, but care must be taken to regularly prune the wheel-shaped growths. If the shrub's wheels are allowed to fully develop, the plant will upend itself and zoom away. When brewed into tea, ambulo leaves provide a magically specific stimulant effect, providing wakefulness and alertness only while one is walking.

8. Unseen Universe Tea Unseen Maple withers if seen. Its trunks are tapped for syrup by blind monks and the syrup stored in opaque bottles. When consumed, the unseen syrup induces hallucinations, but only of things which are actually there. Emotions can be seen as auras, secrets can be heard as whispers, invisible interlopers can be smelled.

9. Fulgur Tea Hermitic Fulgur is a plant which must be grown alone. If a single person tends to two of these plants, both plants will die. Its seeds numb the mouth like mala pepper, and can be brewed into a tea which makes the drinker ‘feel charged’. If the Hermetic Fulgur is struck by lightning, then the tea brewed from its ashes becomes supernaturally potent, capable of keeping the drinker alert and awake for several weeks, though with a tingling tongue the entire time.

10. Tea of Fortune Jo Fortuna is a plant which can look like nearly anything. Gardeners often grow it by mistake. And fields of the stuff are impossible to properly weed. Jo Fortuna Tea can taste like nearly anything. For most drinkers, it’s a novelty experience. Some drinkers taste something so incomparably delicious that they spend the rest of their lives sipping cups of tea which taste like olives or earwax or slightly burnt grapes, pining for just one more good cup of Jo.

11. Crumple Tea The vines of the Greedy Squash plant have a tendency not just to wrap around objects, but to envelop them, squeeze them, crush them. If the leaves of the plant are made into tea, (or the fruit into soup,) then drinking the resulting concoction grants knowledge of all that the plant had crushed. Most commonly, this means the tea has an earthy aroma and makes the drinker ponder fallen branches, but carefully tended squashes can yield teas with diverse sagacious properties.

12. Reach Tea Tricksy Vine is only found hanging from the canopies of tall trees. It won't grow close to the ground, no matter what you try. Its tea promotes thoughtfulness and problem-solving creativity. Monkeys are often seen chewing on the leaves. Perhaps that's why they're so clever.

13 Grows on bones. Feed the plant well, and its berries will erupt into thick syrupy vapor. Drink the vapor into your lungs to see into other worlds.

14. Temperance Tea Temperance Tea is a universal antidote to mind-altering effects. It counters the effects of liquor, narcotics, enchantment spells, other teas, etc. It doesn't come from a specific plant, and can be made from the leaves or flowers of any plant which was formerly the home of a Temperance Fairy. Such fairies enjoy living in beautiful gardens, but will leave if the garden becomes too beautiful.

15. Devil's Tea The Lord of Morels is a twisted mass of fungus and wood located deep beneath the earth. Scrapings taken from the mass can be dissolved in alcohol and drunk as a tincture which twists fate. The drinker will henceforth have enhanced luck but is destined to die prematurely in a cave.

16. Scroll Tea Just as a person can leave behind a ghost when they die, so too can a building. When a wizard's tower crumbles, it leaves behind an imprint on the aether. Lingering Liana can grow on that imprint like a scaffold. Drinking a cup of tea brewed from its leaves allows the drinker to cast a random spell that the wizard of that tower knew. The plant itself can cast them too, if it feels the need.

17. Navigator's Tea Winter Astrid grows only in dangerous places; if you find a living specimen, then you should probably go somewhere else, very quickly. Its tea lets the drinker feel the touch of the stars, and temporarily grants them a supernatural sense of direction.

18. Selene Tea Crescent Thyme can only be grown in soil completely hidden from sunlight, making it rare in the wild but easy to cultivate. Its tea resets circadian rythms, causing the drinker to immediately become drowsy, making them become drowsy at the same the next day, and so on. Potioneers can use its magical essence to manipulate other cyclical phenomena as well.

19. Solari Tea Made with glowing leaves from the Camellia Solaris plant, which can only be grown on the very peaks of mountaintops. Its tea makes it 'subjectively daytime' for the drinker. They feel awake and the skies look bright. This effect grants an ability to see in the dark at night, but only in areas which would be illuminated during the day.

20. Tea of Remembrance Burning Trumpet is an eternally burning plant with flame in place of leaves. It tends to sprout in places where the fabric of reality has been cracked or the borders between worlds are thin. If the plant’s ghostly leaf-flames are used to boil water, then the water becomes temporarily infused with the power of remembrance. The power fades as the water cools. If drunk while warm, the water allows the drinker to recover forgotten memories. If drunk while scalding hot, it allows the drinker to remember past lives.

21. Etern Tea Brewed from the leaves of the tree of eternal life, this is the tea sipped by the creator while surveying creation. It grants the drinker Perfect Peace, and frees their mind from the flow of time. A small satchel of dried leaves are rumored to have been recently smuggled out of heaven.

0. Breeze Tea Breeze Tea leaves grow on the wind. They cannot be cultivated. They cannot be contained or corralled. They can only be harvested by chance, when a handful of leaves blows past your face and you reach out and snatch them. The leaves, when brewed, have no magical effect, but are universally agreed to be delicious.

For more tea, see this batch by Eldritch Fields