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Osmanthus fragrans - Fragrant olive
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Fragrant olive variously known as sweet osmanthus, sweet olive, tea olive, and Osmanthus fragrans, is a species native to Asia from the Himalayas through southern China (Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan) to Taiwan and southern Japan and southeast Asia as far south as Cambodia and Thailand.[1][2]
Description
It is an evergreen shrub or small tree growing to 3–12 m tall. The leaves are 7–15 cm long and 2.6–5 cm broad, with an entire or finely toothed margin. The flowers are white, pale yellow, yellow, or orange-yellow, small (1 cm long), with a four-lobed corolla 5 mm diameter, and have a strong fragrance; they are produced in small clusters in the late summer and autumn. The fruit is a purple-black drupe 10–15 mm long containing a single hard-shelled seed; it is mature in the spring about six months after flowering.
Uses
- In Chinese cuisine, its flowers may be infused with green or black tea leaves to create a scented tea. The flowers are also used to produce osmanthus-scented jam, sweet cakes, dumplings, soups, and liquor.
- In traditional Chinese medicine, osmanthus tea has been used as an herbal tea for the treatment of irregular menstruation.
- The extract of dried flowers showed neuroprotective, free-radical scavenging, antioxidative effects in in vitro assays.
