The Butterfly Pea Flower, known scientifically as Clitoria ternatea, is a plant native to Southeast Asia, famous for its vibrant blue petals. This flower is perhaps most famous for its unique property of changing color to purple or pink when exposed to acidic substances, such as lemon juice. The flower’s primary application is as a natural food dye and a caffeine-free herbal tea ingredient. Due to its popularity as an ingestible botanical, a question has arisen regarding a non-traditional use: is it possible or advisable to smoke the dried flower?
The Chemical Makeup and Traditional Consumption
The deep blue color of the Butterfly Pea Flower is due to its high concentration of anthocyanins. Specifically, the flower contains delphinidin derivatives, which are responsible for the intense blue hue, alongside other flavonols like quercetin and kaempferol derivatives. These compounds are found in many common fruits and vegetables, where they exhibit antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties when consumed orally.
Traditional consumption of Clitoria ternatea has involved ingestion, primarily as a brewed tea or as a natural colorant for rice and desserts. The extract of the flower has been reviewed by regulatory bodies and is approved for use as a color additive in a variety of foods, confirming its safety profile when taken by mouth. This history of safe ingestion is based on how the human digestive system processes the compounds, which is fundamentally different from how the lungs react to combustion products.
Practicality of Smoking the Flower
From a mechanical standpoint, the dried Butterfly Pea Flower can be combusted, just like any other dried plant material. The dried petals are light and brittle, making them physically capable of being ground and rolled or packed into a smoking device. Some anecdotal accounts suggest the dried material has been used as a tobacco-free filler in herbal smoking blends due to its availability.
However, the suitability of the material for inhalation is low compared to other herbs traditionally used in smokes. The flower material tends to be fluffy and may not hold an ember consistently, potentially leading to a harsh smoking experience. Any smoke produced would be light and may carry an herbal taste, but the act of smoking is physically possible if the flower is properly dried and prepared. This feasibility, however, does not equate to safety or provide any desirable effect.
Assessing the Health Risks of Inhalation
The absence of any traditional practice or modern study on inhaling combusted Butterfly Pea Flower is the most significant safety concern. There is no evidence that the health benefits observed from ingesting the flower carry over to inhalation; in fact, the opposite is likely true. When any plant matter is burned, the high heat causes pyrolysis, which breaks down the organic compounds into thousands of new, often irritating or toxic substances.
Inhaling the smoke from any plant, including Clitoria ternatea, introduces particulate matter (PM) deep into the lungs. This particulate matter is known to cause inflammation, irritate the respiratory tract, and contribute to long-term lung health issues, regardless of the plant’s origin. The beneficial anthocyanins and flavonoids are highly unstable under the high temperatures of combustion and would degrade immediately, losing any potential antioxidant effect they had when consumed as a tea.
The inhalation of these breakdown products and particulate matter poses an inherent risk to lung function. For example, while dietary intake of anthocyanins is associated with a reduced risk of lung cancer, burning and inhaling the plant material that contains them introduces known carcinogens and irritants. Since the safety profile for ingestion cannot be applied to inhalation, smoking Butterfly Pea Flower is discouraged due to the inherent dangers of smoke inhalation and the complete lack of specific safety data.