Hello again everyone, I am looking for sources of Non-Herbal varieties of tea plants. I have an herb garden and I need these to complete the garden. The tea types that I am looking for are orange and black pekoe, chinese green, black and white, winter and summer teas. If anyone has any info it will be greatly appreaciated. Or any other varieties that would be of mention. Thanks!

-- Lawannea Sue Stum (Whitedoveranch@yahoo.com), May 17, 2000

Answers

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will step in and clue us in but it's my understanding that black, pekoe and green teas are made from the same plant, namely Camillia sinensis commonly called the "tea camilla". The difference between the teas are in how the leaves are procesed. Black and pekoes undergo different lengths of fermentation and green teas are merely dried. If camillas will grow in your area then they shouldn't be hard to find, they're a very popular flower. I'm not sure what "black and white, winter and summer teas" are so I cannot comment on them.

.........Alan.

The Prudent Food Storage FAQ, v3.5

http://www.ProvidenceCo-op.com

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@netscape.net), May 17, 2000.

Hmm, that shoudl say "black and orange pekoes undergo different lengths of fermentation."

I seem to recall Carla Emery talks about tea cultivation and processing in her Country Living Encyclopedia which would be a good source to look at.

Our local camilla society puts on a very nice show every year and some of the tea camillas would make very nice landscaping plants.

..........Alan.

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@netscape.net), May 17, 2000.

Sorry I'm only into herbal teas! I love them & also all the other uses for them besides drinking! Sonda in Ks.

-- Sonda (sgbruce@birch.net), May 17, 2000.

Nichols Garden Nursery sells a couple of varieties of camellia sinensis. A very good and interesting catalog. Of course, I can't find mine right now to give you the web site or mail address. I think if you play with the name you can probably find it. They are in WA or Or, my memory is totally failing me at this moment!

-- Jean (schiszik@tbcnet.com), May 17, 2000.

Richters Herb Nursery also sells tea plants. Their web address is www.richters.com. They are located in Ontario, Canada. Remember that their prices are in Canadian dollars which, given the exchange rate, is generally a pretty good deal in American dollars. You can order on-line or request a catalog. The catalog is in full-color and way cool if you're into herbs.

-- Sandy (tripletreefarm@hotmail.com), May 17, 2000.

Well guys this is what a friend of mine found out. Thanks for all of the help in this area. May God be with you! Tea Botanical: Camellia Thea (LINK.) Family: N.O. Camelliaceae Description Constituents Medicinal Action and Uses ---Synonyms---Thea sinensis (Sims). Thea Veridis. Thea bohea. Thea stricta Jassamica. Camellia theifera (Griff.). ---Part Used---Dried leaf. ---Habitat---Assam; cultivated in Ceylon, Japan, Java, and elsewhere where climate allows.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- ---Description---A small evergreen shrub cultivated to a height of 7 to 8 feet, but growing wild up to 30 feet high, much branched. Bark rough, grey. Leaves dark green, lanceolate or elliptical, on short stalks, blunt at apex, base tapering, margins shortly serrate, young leaves hairy, older leaves glabrous. Flowers solitary or two or three together on short branchlets in the leaf axils, somewhat drooping, on short stalks with a few small bracts, 1 to 1 1/2 inches wide; sepals five, imbricate, slightly united below, ovate or rounded, blunt smooth, persistent; petals usually five or up to nine, unequal, strongly rounded, concave, spreading, white, caducous; stamens indefinite, adherent to petals at base in two rows, filaments fiexuose, half the length of petals; anthers large, versatile; ovary small, free, conical, downy, threecelled with three or four pendulous ovules in each cell; styles three distinct or combined at base, slender simple stigmas. Fruit a smooth, flattened, rounded, trigonous three-celled capsule; seed solitary in each cell; size of a small nut. It was formerly supposed that black and green tea were the produce of distinct plants, but they are both prepared from the same plant. Green tea is prepared by exposing the gathered leaves to the air until superfluous moisture is eliminated, when they are roasted over a brisk wood fire and continually stirred until they become moist and flaccid; after this they pass to the rolling table, and are rolled into balls and subjected to pressure which twists them and gets rid of the moisture; they are then shaken out on flat trays, again roasted over a slow and steady charcoal fire, and kept in rapid motion for an hour to an hour and a half, till they assume a dullish green colour. After this they are winnowed, screened, and graded into different varieties. With black tea, the gathered leaves are exposed to the air for a longer period, then gathered up and tossed until soft and flaccid, and after further exposure, roasted in an iron pan for about five minutes. After rolling and pressing, they are shaken out, exposed to the outer air for some hours, re-roasted for three or four minutes, rerolled, spread out in baskets and exposed to the heat of a charcoal fire for five or six minutes and then rolled for the third time and again heated, and finally dried in baskets over charcoal fires, from which process they become black in colour. China is the great tea-producing country, over four million acres of ground being devoted to its cultivation. In India also it is a very important product.

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---Constituents---Caffeine (theine), tannin (10 to 20 per cent gallotannic acid), boheic acid, volatile oil, aqueous extract, protein wax, resin, ash and theophylline.

---Medicinal Action and Uses---Stimulant, astringent. It exerts a decided influence over the nervous system, generally evinced by a feeling of comfort and exhilaration; it also causes unnatural wakefulness when taken in quantity. Taken moderately by healthy individuals it is harmless, but in excessive quantities it will produce unpleasant nervous and dyspeptic symptoms, the green variety being decidedly the more injurious. Tea is rarely used as a medicine, but, the infusion is useful to relieve neuralgic headaches.

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-- Lawannea Sue Stum (Whitedoveranch@yahoo.com), May 18, 2000.

Well, I never thought I'd see a question about tea here. I am the owner of the Teahouse Kuan Yin in Seattle and have been importing and serving & selling tea since 1990. Our 10th anniversity is tomorrow. Tea -- I know tea! Yes, all tea is from the camellia sinensis. There are two main divisions of the plants, china jat & assam jat. (Jat comes from the Sanskrit jati, meaning class or group.) The china jat plants were found in & exported to India and later Ceylon to establish plantations there. Later, wild camellia sinensis plants were found in the jungles of Assam in NE India, and those to were used to establish tea plantations. The terms pekoe & orange pekoe only indicates the size of the made tea leaf -- that is, after it has been processed and dried. It does not have anything to do with taste or quality or type. It is just a standard indication of the size of the pieces of tea leaf, and is only used to describe black tea. OP, as it is usually called, consists of pieces of tea about 3/8 to 5/8 inch long, which when steeped, will unfurl into about 3/8 x 3/4 inch chunks of leaf. only about 3% of a Ceylon plantation's production will be OP. BOP, or broken orange pekoe, consists of piece of tea leaf max 1/8", and it is this size of tealeaf which provides the best balance of colour, flavour and aroma. About 70% of a plantation's production will be turned into BOP. The remainder will be made into smaller grades : BOPFannings, fannings, and various Dust grades. Dust grades are just what they sound like, and because they are all edges, so to speak, they provide a lot of colour (at the expense of flavour and aroma). That is what is in teabags, because you need a lot of colour to seep through the filter paper. That is why teabags are lousy tea -- all colour, no aroma or flavour. I give you this lengthy treatise on the term pekoe, because people are so misinformed, thanks to the misleading verbiage on the teabage boxes. If the tea in the teabags was ever of the OP size, it was pulverized for teabag filler.

Since all tea is from the same plant, (think of the jats as cousins), if you want Chinese green, you have to grow your tea plant in China, and process the leaves as the Chinese do. White tea, which has received a lot of press lately, is made from the white, feathery tips of the budding leaves. The Chinese categorize their teas by the colour of the infusion, and "white" tea makes a very light liquor, green makes a green-coloured liquor, and what we call black tea, they call red tea. Then of course there is oolong, which means a leaf which is green on the inside and red at the edges. At different time of the year and in different locales, the tea produced will be particularly good or have distinct characters, and these times are known as flushes. (Basically, seasons.) Winter & summer teas refer mainly to oolong teas picked at these quality times. There are also spring and autumn, and in Indian teas you have First Flush, Second Flush and Autumnals. But all of the above are made from the one tea plant: the camellia sinensis.

So to complete your garden, you really only need one tea plant. That doesn't make much tea actually, since you pick only the first two leaves and the bud. Better you should get a number of plants and make a hedge. Nichols Garden Nursery www.gardennursery.com, and Raintree Nursery at RaintreeNursery.com both have tea plants. They both have the same types (one has white flowers, one has pink) -- and what effect that has on the plant as a leaf producer, I don't know. I have been to many tea plantations, but I can't recall seeing them in flower. I also don't know where you live, so I can't tell you if the kind of climate you have will be good for tea.

And now, in exchange for all this tea lecture, I will insert one little plug for our website. Please visit We have really good tea!

-- snoozy (allen@oz.net), May 19, 2000.

I thought I had put our website address in my original posting. If not, it is teahousechoice.com . But perhaps Countryside filters it out, in which case I will not see it here either, and then at least I will know they took it out. (If so, that is OK -- I just need to know the rules.)

-- snoozy (allen@oz.net), May 22, 2000.

Wow! Thank you all for all of the interesting information. I, too, am a tea lover and have been wanting to grown my own tea but wasn't too sure about it. This really helps a lot. I'll be happy if I get just one kind of real tea to grow in my yard. It has always interested me and I only recently found out that I could grow it in my area. Now I know what plant to get and where to get it.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), May 22, 2000.