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
When I left the north, on my way to the city of
Foo-chow-foo, on the river Min, in the province Fokien, I had no
doubt that I should find the tea hills there covered with the other
species, _Thea Bohea_, from which we generally suppose the black
teas are made; and this was the more likely to be the case as this
species actually derives its specific name from the Bohea hills in
this province. Great was my surprise to find all the plants on the
tea hills near Foo-chow exactly the same as those in the green tea
districts of the north. Here were, then, green tea plantations on
the black tea hills, and not a single plant of the _Thea Bohea_ to
be seen. Moreover, at the time of my visit, the natives were busily
employed in the manufacture of black teas. Although the specific
differences of the tea plant were well known to me, I was so much
surprised, and I may add amused, at this discovery, that I procured
a set of specimens for the herbarium, and also dug up a living
plant, which I took northward to Chekiang. On comparing it with
those which grow on the green tea hills, no difference whatever was
observed. It appears, therefore, that the black and green teas of
the northern districts of China (those districts in which the
greater part of the teas for the foreign market are made) are both
produced from the same variety, and that that variety is the _Thea
viridis_, or what is commonly called green tea plant. On the other
hand those black and green teas which are manufactured in
considerable quantities in the vicinity of Canton, are obtained
from the _Thea Bohea_, or black tea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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