Part 1: What is Yaupon?

Over the past month, we’ve had an overwhelming number of visitors requesting information on yaupon tea

So we thought this was the perfect time to bring one of our past postings up again!

Yaupon (ilex vomitoria)

is a bushy, evergreen shrub that can be found all over the island of Hatteras. It grows along mainly along the South Eastern seaboard, including the Gulf of Mexico, central Florida, South Texas, parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

The word yaupon was derived from its Catawban name, yopún, which is a diminutive form of the word yop, meaning “tree”. When parts of the yaupon were utilized for tea, the English referred to it as “The Black Drink” and the Spanish called it “Cacina”. The Hatteras Islanders used the Native American name, “yaupon”.