The Thicket Field Guide
Yerba maté
Ilex paraguariensis
- Plant family
- Holly family (Aquifoliaceae)
- Part used
- Leaves
- Where it grows
- Native to South America: Paraguay, northern Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil.
- Flavor
- Grassy, robust, green.
History
The Guaraní people were drinking yerba maté long before Europeans arrived, and its use spread across colonial Paraguay in the late 1500s. In the 1600s Jesuit missionaries domesticated the plant and set out plantations in Misiones, in what is now northern Argentina.
In South America it’s still drunk from a hollowed gourd through a metal straw called a bombilla, passed around a circle and topped up with hot, not boiling, water. Served cold, it’s called tereré. It’s also where Flint gets its caffeine.