redbush en · NOUN
Etymology
Calque of Afrikaans rooibos, red + bush.
Meanings
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(uncountable) rooibos tea
Herbal teas: redbush, rosehip tea, peppermint etc.
2015, Sarah Myhill, Sustainable Medicine: whistle-blowing on 21st century medical practice: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 little blackmail, might be reunited with a young grandson.
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:
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(uncountable) rooibos (shrub of genus Aspalathus)
One of the few foodstuffs of the indigenous Khoikhoi and San people that European colonists adopted with any enthusiasm was a tea made from the dried, fermented leaf tips of a scrubby bushveld plant, Aspalathus linearis, known as redbush or rooibos.
2010, Will Sellick, The Imperial African Cookery Book: Recipes from English-speaking Africa: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: