Camellia sinensis
Tea is an evergreen
plant of the
Camellia family. It has smooth, shiny
pointed leaves which look
similar to the privet hedge leaf found in British gardens.
Camellia sinensis is indigenous to China and parts of India. The wild tea plant can develop into a tree 30 metres high, so that monkeys were trained to pick the leaves and throw them down for collection below. Today, under cultivation, Camellia Sinensis is kept to a height of approximately one metre for easy plucking purposes. To produce tea on a commercial scale, saplings are planted close to each other and repeatedly pruned or clipped to induct a luxuriant leaf- growth sideways as well as to avoid blossoming. The saplings take three to seven years to mature into bushes and if well- cultivated, yield leaf prolifically for as long as a century. The height of tea bushes is rarely allowed to exceed 100 cm and their number per hectare ranges between 4,000 to 15,000. A hectare can yield anywhere between 800 to 4,000 kgs annually. The Indian average yield per hectare in 1998 was 1996 kgs. To make one kg of tea requires 4.5 kgs of tender green leaves.
There are more than 1,500 teas to choose from more than 25 different tea producing countries around the world but the main producers are India, China,Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Indonesia. It is cultivated as a plantation crop, likes acidic soil and a warm climate with at least 50 inches of rain per annum.
Story of Indian Tea
The history of Tea in India, however, goes back as far as 1774, when a consignment of tea seeds from China arrived in this country. In 1778, Sir Joseph Banks, in a note on the cultivation of new crops, suggested that experiments be made with Tea which he felt could grow well between the 26th and the 30th parallels of latitude. He also suggested the possibility of importing tea-growers and tea-makers from China. In 1793, Banks visited China to obtain detailed information about the cultivation and manufacture of tea. Thereafter, a consignment of seeds and plants was sent back to Calcutta.
Shortly thereafter,in the 1820s, the Bruce brothers appeared on the scene. During his travels in Assam, Robert Bruce discovered that tea existed in those areas and asked for a specimen of the tea plant. From these early beginnings, and largely as a result of an unending stream of dedicated planters, the industry has spread in northeast India. Indeed , the whole of the Brahmaputra Valley is now almost one great green carpet and from there, it has spilled over into the Dooars and into the foothills of the Himalayas.
There are four popular varieties of Indian Tea:
1.Assam
2.Darjeeling
3.North Bengal Teas
4.Nilgiris
