Growing rosella in pots

Rosella (Roselle) is hibiscus related plant but its flower is not very big and will bloom for just a couple hours in the morning, so it's definitely not a very attractive plant to have for its beauty. Here's a pic of a rosella flower blooming. The color is pink but there are some that's more white/yellow.

 

One of the popular purposes of growing rosella is for harvesting its sepals. Once the flowers wilted, the seed capsule will grow big along with the sepals, like the pics below:

 

After 2 weeks, you can snip off the flower stem, harvesting the red sepals and you can use them for tea after you remove the seed capsules.

Put some rosella sepals in hot water, 6 sepals for a cup of tea, you can add rose petals too if you like. Let it set for 5 minutes or until the water color has changed into bright red. Don't boil the water with the sepals, it will ruin the vitamin C the tea is famous for. Pour into a cup, straining the sepals/petals out.

 

There you have a pretty red rosella tea ready to drink. The taste is a bit sour. It's like lemon infused water. The more sepals you use, the more sour the taste will be. :)

Try growing a few pots of rosella at once so you can have a cup of this red tea everyday. They are easy to grow and will grow very fast as long as they have enough sun shine. :)