In Southeast Asia, people enjoy an delicious blue tea using the dried flowers from a native plant called the butterfly pea flower, or Clitoria ternatea. Add an acid like lemon, and it changes from blue to purple. As tea lovers around the world discovered this magical brew, it became a wildly popular beverage at high-end restaurants and tea shops, and was quickly picked up by online retailers. What home gardeners and tea lovers alike may not realize is that the butterfly pea flower isn’t hard to grow or propagate.

In its native tropical and equatorial Asian habitats, the butterfly pea plant is a perennial. It is a legume and member of the pea family (Fabaceae) and an evergreen climber with either egg-shaped or elliptic leaves. Although it’s hardy and can stand up to hot conditions with little rain, it has a low seed-germination rate. It creates fruits up to seven centimeters long from which deep blue or white blooms emerge. When tender, these fruits are edible.