redbush

Noun

redbush (uncountable)

1. rooibos tea
   • Sitting in her ocher-walled office with its tin roof and itinerant chickens, Mma Ramotswe sips redbush tea and ponders the ethics of her cases: the wife who wants the detective to steal back the car her husband has stolen; the grief-stricken mother who, with Mma Ramotswe's deft application of a...2002 January 27, Alida Becker, “Miss Marple of Botswana”, in The New York Times
   • I'm thinking I'm in for a sermon on decaffeinated redbush, or the antioxidant properties of organic camomile.2014, Paula Daly, Keep Your Friends Close

   Synonyms:

   rooibos, rooibos tea

2. rooibos (shrub of genus Aspalathus)
   • In the Cape region of South Africa the leaves of the wild redbush [Aspalathus linearis (Burm. f.) R. Dahlgr.] are collected by farmers for export as Rooibos tea.2006, Fary Peterson, Dryland agriculture, page 893
   • I shall not write about the estimable maté, Ilex paraguayensis, which is a holly, nor of rooibos, redbush (Aspalathus linearis), of the pea family, nor of any of the flowery infusions from camomile to hibiscus which have usurped the name of tea.2007, John Charles Griffiths, Tea: The Drink that Changed the World, page 9