There are few subjects in the vegetable kingdom that have attracted such a large share of public notice as the tea plant. Much error for a long time existed regarding its botanical classification, owing to the jealousy of the Chinese government preventing foreigners from visiting the districts where tea was cultivated; while the information derived from the Chinese merchants at the shipping ports, scanty as it was, could not be depended on with any certainty. So that before proceeding to discuss the question of the species which yield the teas of commerce it may be well to notice those which are usually described as distinct varieties in systematic works.
Tea is differently named in the various provinces of China where it is grown. In some it is called Tcha or Cha, in others Tha or Thea, in Canton Tscha, and finally Tia by the inhabitants of Fo-kien, from whom the first cargoes are said to have been obtained, and so pronounced in their patois as to give rise to the European name Tea. By botanists it is termed Thea, this last name being adopted by Linnæus for the sake of its Greek orthography, being exactly that of Oex—a goddess—a coincidence doubtless quite acceptable to those who use and enjoy the beverage as it deserves.
The species of the genus Thea are few in number, some botanists being of opinion that even these are of a single kind—Camillia—and is by them classed as Thea-Camillia. Others asserting that no relation whatever exists between these two plants, maintaining that the Thea and Camillia are widely different and of a distinct species. Yet, though the Camillia bears the same name among the Chinese as Thea and possesses many of its structural characteristics, distinctions are made between them by many eminent botanists, who hold that they differ widely and materially and are mostly agreed in the statement that the true Tea-plant is distinguished from the Camillia in having longer, narrower, thinner, more serrated and less shiny leaves, and that a marked difference is also noticeable in the form and contents of the fruit or pod.
Davis argues that they constitute two genera, closely allied but yet different, the distinctions consisting principally in the fruit or seed. The seed-vessel of the Thea being a three-lobed capsule, with the lobes strongly marked, each the size of a currant, containing only a single round seed, the lobes bursting vertically in the middle when ripe, exposing the seed. The capsule of the Camillia is triangular in shape, much larger in size, and though three-celled is but single-seeded. Bentham and Hooker, who have thoroughly revised the “genera plantatum,” say they can find no good reason by which they can separate the Tea-plant as a genus distinct from the Camillia, and so class it as Thea-Camillia. While Cambesedes contends that they are widely separated by several intervening genera, the difference being entirely in the form of the fruit or pod; and Griffin, who is well qualified to form a correct opinion, states that, from an examination of the India Tea-plant and two species of the Camillia taken from the Kyosa hills, he found no difference whatever. The dehiscence in both plants is of the same nature, the only noticeable difference really existing being of a simply specific value. The fruit of the Tea-shrub is three-celled and three-seeded while that of the Camillia is triangular in form and single-seeded only.
Linnæus, while recognizing the Tea-plant as belonging to the same family as the Camillia, Latinizes its Chinese name, classing it as Thea Sinensis, and dividing it into two species—Thea Viridis and Thea Bohea; DeCandolle, while indorsing Linnæus’ classification, adds that “in the eighteenth century when the shrub which produces tea was little known Linnæus named the genus Thea Sinensis, but later judged it better to distinguish two species which he believed at the time to correspond with the distinctions existing between the Green and Black teas of commerce.” The latest works on botany, also, make Thea a distinct genus—Thea Sinensis—divided into two species—Thea Viridis and Thea Bohea—these botanical terms having no specific relation to the varieties known to commerce as Green and Black teas. It having also been proven that there is but one species comprehending both varieties, the difference in color and character being due to a variation in the soil, climate, as well as to different methods of cultivation and curing, from either or both of which Green or Black tea may be prepared at will according to the process of manufacture.
Thea Sinensis.
(Chinese Tea Plant.)
In a wild state is large and bushy, ranging in height from ten to fifteen feet, often assuming the proportions of a small tree. While in a state of cultivation its growth is limited by frequent prunings to from three to five feet, forming a polyandrous, shrub evergreen with bushy stem and numerous leafy branches. The leaves are alternate, large, elliptical and obtusely serrated, varied and placed in smooth short-channeled foot-stalks, the calyx being small, and divided into five segments. The flowers are white, axilary and slightly fragrant, often three together in separate pedicils, the corolla having from five to nine petals, cohering at the base with filaments numerous and inverted at the base of the corolla. The anthers are large, yellow and tre-foil, the capsule three-celled and three-seeded; and like all other plants in a state of cultivation, it has produced marked varieties, two of which Thea Viridis and Thea Bohea are critically described as distinct species, distinguished from each other in size, color, form and texture of the leaves, as well as other peculiarities.