The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom: Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.Simmonds, P. L. (Peter Lund)
Science
The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom: Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.
Simmonds, P. L. (Peter Lund)
Botany, Economic
I have often remarked that the tea-plant requires for its perfection
the influence of two separate and distinct climates, the heat of
summer and the cold of winter. The thermometer in this vicinity
during the heat of summer generally ranges from 74 at 6 o'clock a.m.
to 82 at 3 o'clock p.m., only one day during the summer so high as
86.
This is a most agreeable temperature, nights always cool, which the
tea-plant enjoys, and the days hot and fanned with the mountain
breeze.
The drought I found the most difficult point to contend with, owing
to the want of adequate means for irrigation. I lost 20 or 30 plants
through this, and learned that no tea plantation should he
established without irrigation. After two or three years there will
be little necessity for it, because the depth of the roots will
generally then protect the plant.
My plantation at Golden Grove is well supplied with water, or I
should not have purchased it at any price.
It is the first and most important point to secure a southern or
western aspect, a gentle declivity the second, salubrious air and
suitable soil the third.
Our country is filled with natural tea plantations, which are only
waiting the hand of the husbandman to be covered with this luxuriant
and productive plant.
I know the public is naturally impatient of delay. Like corn, it is
expected that the tea-nuts will be planted in the spring, and the
crop gathered in the autumn. But they forget that the tea-plant does
not interfere with any other crop, and when once planted it does not
soon require a renewal.
I have sometimes felt this impatience myself, and longed for a cup
of tea of my own growing, but I have never had one. As a husbandman,
I must wait some time longer, and let patience have her perfect
work."
Again, under date May 1, 1850, he states that he has succeeded
admirably in the culture. The plants bear the winter well, and their
physiology and general characteristics remain unchanged by the change
of climate and soil. The leaf puts out at the same period of the year
that it does in China.
On the 27th of May, 1850, Dr. Smith received a further batch of
trees, fresh, green and healthful, as if still growing in the
plantations of China; after a passage of little more than five months.
These plants, together with the seedlings and nuts, were of the green
tea species, and obtained from a quarter situated about 700 miles from
Canton.
In a letter, dated Grenville, S.C., June 17th, 1850, with which I have
been favored, he adds:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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