Chamomile tea comes from the dried flower heads of chamomile, a daisy-like plant in the Asteraceae family. More than one million cups are consumed worldwide every day, and nearly all of it traces back to one species: German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla), grown primarily in Egypt, India, and parts of Europe.
Two Species, One Tea
There are two plants commonly called “chamomile,” and they’re not the same species. German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) is an annual that grows up to two feet tall and produces the vast majority of the world’s chamomile tea. Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) is a low-growing perennial, sometimes used as a ground cover, that’s less widely cultivated and more commonly found in essential oils than in tea bags.
Both belong to the daisy family and look similar at a glance, but German chamomile has hollow, cone-shaped flower centers packed with tiny disc florets and ringed by about fifteen white petals. That hollow center is actually one of the easiest ways to tell the two apart. Roman chamomile’s flower centers are solid. When you buy chamomile tea at a grocery store, you’re almost certainly getting German chamomile unless the label specifically says otherwise.
Which Part of the Plant Becomes Tea
Only the flower heads are used. The bright gold cones and their surrounding white petals contain the plant’s beneficial compounds, including flavonoids and a small amount of essential oil. Stems and leaves are discarded during processing. When you steep a cup of chamomile tea, you’re making what’s technically an aqueous extract: hot water pulls soluble compounds out of the dried flowers, particularly a flavonoid called apigenin-7-O-glucoside, which is far more water-soluble than free apigenin found in alcohol-based extracts.
Where It Grows
Chamomile is native to temperate regions of Europe and Asia, but today it’s cultivated on every inhabited continent. Egypt is the world’s largest exporter, accounting for roughly 27% of global chamomile flower shipments. India and Germany round out the top three. Hungary, Poland, Argentina, and Nepal also contribute significant harvests.
The plant is remarkably unfussy. It thrives in full sun with well-drained soil and actually performs well in poor, low-fertility ground. It doesn’t need much fertilizer, rarely suffers from serious pest problems beyond aphids, and tolerates a range of soil types as long as drainage is good. Waterlogged soil, especially in winter, will kill it. German chamomile propagates from tiny seeds planted just below the soil surface, and a single plant can produce hundreds of flower heads over a growing season.
From Field to Tea Bag
Timing the harvest matters. Flowers are picked when the white petals are fully open and the golden center cone is plump but hasn’t started to flatten or drop petals. Most large-scale operations use mechanical harvesters that comb through the crop, though hand-picking is still common on smaller farms, particularly in Egypt and parts of South Asia.
Fresh chamomile flowers spoil quickly, so drying happens soon after harvest. The most common commercial method is convection oven drying at around 45°C (113°F), warm enough to remove moisture without destroying the plant’s active compounds. Freeze-drying at roughly negative 50°C preserves color and polyphenol content better but costs significantly more. Spray-drying at high temperatures (around 140°C) is used mainly for powdered extracts, not whole-flower tea.
Once dried, the flowers are either sold whole for loose-leaf tea or ground and packed into tea bags, sometimes blended with other herbs like lavender, mint, or lemon balm. Whole dried flowers tend to produce a more aromatic cup because the essential oils remain better protected inside intact flower heads until steeping.
Thousands of Years of Use
Chamomile has been used medicinally for thousands of years across multiple civilizations. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all valued the plant. In China, its earliest recorded medicinal use appears in Uyghur medical texts. A 10th-century Uyghur medical work called the “Zhu Medical Canon” refers to chamomile as “Bamu Nai” and describes its therapeutic applications. In Europe, chamomile became a staple of folk medicine long before it entered the modern tea aisle, used in poultices, baths, and infusions.
Today, the journey from ancient remedy to supermarket shelf is a global supply chain. Egyptian farmers grow and dry the flowers, exporters ship them in bulk to tea companies worldwide, and those companies blend, package, and distribute the final product. The chamomile in your mug likely traveled thousands of miles, but the plant itself is the same daisy-family flower that people have been steeping in hot water since antiquity.