Peach Blossom Tea

I have always had trouble with fruit trees. Keeping a garden that is integrated with the surrounding environment may sound romantic, but it comes with a price. Late frosts, fungi, obnoxious squirrels, and other interferences always clear out my orchard-ly produce before I get to taste anything remotely like a ripe fruit.

Rather than taking the gamble again this year, I decided to experiment with thinning my peach blossoms.

 

Peach Blossom Thinning

Peach trees (like all trees) expend nutrients and carbohydrates to produce fruit. Naturally, prolific blossoming and fruit development is a strain on the tree [1]. Manually thinning blossoms and young fruit allows the tree to pour its finite resources into a manageable number of fruits.

Thinning the blossoms and young fruit increases the quality of harvest for multiple reasons [1]. The conservation of nutrients and carbohydrates allows remaining fruits to grow bigger and heavier. In the UFSun peach variant, thinning increased fruit weight by 45% and diameter by 14%. Thinning also increases nutrient accumulation within the fruit, making the peaches healthier and more flavorful to consume.

Straining a peach tree by allowing it to produce too much fruit can reduce the health and overall vigor of the tree itself [1]. Additionally, branches laden with heavy fruit are prone to breaking and causing severe damage to the tree.

I’ve been convinced that climbing ladders and hand-plucking tender little blossoms is worthwhile. But I hate waste. Simply shaking the flowers to the ground stirs a little sadness into my soul. Then I realized; one can make tea from these little pink wonders.

 

Peach Blossoms And Health

Peach blossoms have many benefits when consumed or applied topically, but the two studies I found most interesting related to obesity and skin-aging.

A diagram of phytochemical classifications from [5]

Phytonutrients (phytochemicals) are compounds found in plants. When consumed, they have many known health benefits, including boosted immune system, hormone balance, and more. The peach blossom possesses an abundance of these phytochemicals, among them being chlorogenic acid, kaempferol, and quercitrin (a quercetin derivative) [4]. Many of the compounds found in the peach blossom have been individually shown to counter obesity. To test the full compound cocktail that comprises the peach blossom, the NIH fed obese mice peach flower extract along with a high fat diet. 

The goal was to discover if the peach flower had any appreciable effect on the health issues of obese mice. It did. The mice that consumed peach flower extract in addition to the control diet saw a significant decrease in body weight, healthier livers, spleens, and regulated lipid metabolism. Basically, success. The consumption of peach blossoms proved measurably beneficial for countering obesity even when no other dietary changes were introduced. 

There are few pleasures in this world so warming and relaxing as soft sunlight on skin. Sunlight is doubtless essential for mood, vitamin D production, and a whole list of deeper and lesser-known benefits, yet ultraviolet radiation also poses potential harm. One detrimental effect of UV-A radiation is the photoaging of skin [2]. Photoaging is apparent through skin roughness, dyspigmentation, and deep wrinkle formation. This results from damage to DNA, proteins, and lipids within the skin, and presents issues not only for vanity, but also comfort and functionality. 

When consumed orally or applied topically, peach flower extract has demonstrated measurable anti-aging effects for the skin [2]. Wouldn’t you know it, the NIH got itself some hairless mice. The mice underwent a process of UV-irradiation while also consuming varying amounts of peach flower extract. Epidermal and skin-fold thickness (traits of photoaging which can become quite severe) significantly increased for the control mice who received no peach flower extract while being subject to UV-irradiation. For those mice which consumed peach flower extract, however, the effects of UV-irradiation were deeply mitigated. Topical application or oral consumption of peach flower extract increased antioxidant enzyme activity in the skin. This is a direct and significant contribution to the efficacy of peach flower’s diminution of skin damage.

Oral consumption of peach flower extract also significantly damped inflammatory cytokines produced in the skin through UV damage. Some cytokines are great and boost the immune system, but others can impede healing. An excess of cytokines can be very detrimental to health. IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α are produced and present in the skin in response to UV-A damage. These cytokines may be essential in proper proportions when a host is fighting pathogens, but they are also known for exacerbating damage in situations of chronic conditions. I don’t know about you, but I like to see the sun daily, and so I may be prone to an excess of these cytokines. Peach flowers never seemed so sweet. 

Making Tea

Making peach blossom tea is very simple.

As a peach blossom progresses from emerging bud to full bloom, the phenolic, flavonoid, and antioxidant content dissipates [3]. This means that an open flower is less nutritious than a closed bud. Based on this, I picked the blossoms before they had opened. 

I freeze-dry most of my preserved produce in order to retain as many of the original nutrients as possible. Since the blossoms are light, and prone to blowing about the chamber when the vacuum pump turns on, I froze them into ice cubes. This added weight during the most tumultuous period (initial switch on of vacuum), and eventually all the excess water sublimated away. Finally, I put the dried blossoms in vacuum sealed jars.

I’m not a tea expert, but apparently one is supposed to heat the water to just below boiling in order to prevent breaking down certain flavonoids.

When fully steeped, the tea has a light, rosy hue and smells like a pear turnover. It seems almost stickily sweet, like the thick caramel-ly insides of a fruit pie. When I first experienced the aroma, I worried that a mug full of the stuff would be a cloying flavor to muscle through. I was wrong. The tea isn’t bitter, but it is balanced by the light, dry taste of tannins.

I’ve always had an unwavering love for chamomile, but as it turns out, it is possible to love more than one tea.

References:

[1] Chang, Y., Sarkhosh, A., Brecht, J., & Andersen, P. (2019, July 1). THINNING FLORIDA PEACHES FOR LARGER FRUIT. HS1324/HS1324: Thinning Florida peaches for larger fruit. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/HS1324

[2] Kwak, C. S., Yang, J., Shin, C.-Y., & Chung, J. H. (2018, February). Topical or oral treatment of peach flower extract attenuates UV-induced epidermal thickening, matrix metalloproteinase-13 expression and pro-inflammatory cytokine production in hairless mice skin. Nutrition research and practice. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5792253/

[3] Liu, J.-C., Jiao, Z.-G., Yang, W.-B., Zhang, C.-L., Liu, H., & Lv, Z.-Z. (2015, November 18). Variation in phenolics, flavanoids, antioxidant and tyrosinase inhibitory activity of peach blossoms at different developmental stages. Molecules (Basel, Switzerland). Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331935/

[4] Song, J., Kim, Y.-S., Kim, L., Park, H. J., Lee, D., & Kim, H. (2019, September 11). Anti-obesity effects of the flower of prunus persica in high-fat diet-induced obese mice. Nutrients. Retrieved April 6, 2023, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6770263/

[5] Vizzarri, F. (2018, September). Dietary supplementation of verbascoside in livestock production: Short Review. Research Gate. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328198587_Dietary_supplementation_of_Verbascoside_in_livestock_production_Short_review