Thai basil
type of basil native to Southeast Asia
Thai basil is a type of basil native to and widely used throughout Southeast Asia, that has been cultivated to provide distinctive traits. Its flavor is described as anise- and licorice-like and slightly spicy. It is more stable under high or extended cooking temperatures than sweet basil. Thai basil has small, narrow leaves, purple stems, and pink-purple flowers.
Description
Thai basil is sturdy and compact, growing up to 45 cm (1 ft 6 in), and has shiny green, slightly serrated, narrow leaves with a sweet, anise-like scent and hints of licorice, along with a slight spiciness lacking in sweet basil. Thai basil has a purple stem, and like other plants in the mint family, the stem is square. Its leaves are opposite and decussate. As implied by its scientific name, Thai basil flowers in the form of a thyrse. The inflorescence is purple, and the flowers when open are pink.
Taxonomy and nomenclature
Sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) has multiple cultivars — Thai basil, O. basilicum var.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Thai basil” as type of basil native to Southeast Asia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3073413. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thai basil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.