Rowan & Thistle

PLATE No. 014

Ingredient Collection

Butterfly Pea Flower

Clitoria ternatea

Botanical plate of Butterfly Pea (Clitoria ternatea): a twining vine with small oval leaflets and vivid blue flowers with pale throats, beside a flower in side view, an unopened bud, a young green pod, a mature pod opened on its seeds, and loose brown seeds.

Figure Key

  • Fig. 1 Open flower, showing the pale throat
  • Fig. 2 Flower in side view
  • Fig. 3 Unopened bud
  • Fig. 4 Young pod, the spent flower still attached
  • Fig. 5 Pod opened at maturity, seeds in place
  • Fig. 6 Seeds

The Ingredient

Butterfly Pea Flower is a botanical extract drawn from the vivid blue blossoms of Clitoria ternatea, a slender climbing vine of tropical Asia. Its color comes from anthocyanins — the same family of pigments that color blueberries and red cabbage — which carry antioxidant activity along with the pigment itself. In a formula it does two things at once: it tints, and it brings a gentle botanical to skin and hair. The flowers are picked, dried, and steeped; nothing else is added.

From Plant to Ingredient

  1. Butterfly Pea Flower, step 1 — Flower: a sprig of vivid blue butterfly pea flowers with pale yellow throats and green leaflets.

    1. Flower

    The vine blooms almost year-round; blossoms are picked by hand in the morning.

  2. Butterfly Pea Flower, step 2 — Dried Petals: a pile of dried blue butterfly pea petals.

    2. Dried Petals

    Petals are dried in the shade, out of direct sun, so the blue holds.

  3. Butterfly Pea Flower, step 3 — Infusion: a glass beaker of deep blue water with whole blue flowers steeping in it.

    3. Infusion

    The dried petals steep until the water runs deep indigo.

  4. Butterfly Pea Flower, step 4 — Butterfly Pea Extract: a glass bowl of deep blue liquid.

    4. Butterfly Pea Extract

    Strained and blended in, for its color and its antioxidants.

Why We Chose It

We chose Butterfly Pea for a plain reason: we wanted a color we could name. A blue bar or a blue rinse almost always means a synthetic dye or a coated mica, and neither one does anything for your skin. This is a flower — steeped like tea, strained, and blended in — and it brings its own antioxidants along with the pigment. It is not the most obedient colorant on the shelf. It leans violet in anything acidic and it fades slowly in sunlight. We think a color that behaves like a plant is worth that.

What You'll Notice

  • A deep indigo color drawn from the flower itself, not a dye
  • A shift toward violet in more acidic formulas, and a slow, gentle fade

Botanical Profile

Scientific Name
Clitoria ternatea
INCI Name
Clitoria Ternatea Flower Extract
Plant Part Used
Flowers
Final Ingredient
Botanical Extract
Origin
Southeast Asia

A Closer Look

Clitoria ternatea has been grown across South and Southeast Asia for centuries — as a garden climber, as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop that feeds the soil it grows in, and as a dye for both food and cloth. Its blue is genuinely unusual. Most blues in nature are structural tricks of the light rather than pigment, but this one is real chemistry: a group of anthocyanins called ternatins, which hold their color in neutral water and turn violet as acidity rises. That is why a cup of butterfly pea tea changes color the moment you squeeze lime into it, and it is the same reason this extract can read blue in one formula and violet in another. We treat that as something to explain rather than something to correct. Where a bar or a rinse needs color, this is what we would rather reach for.

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