Tea Basics

The tea plant is an evergreen, perennial shrub called Camellia Sinensis, which thrives in sub-tropics and highland tropic regions. There are four botanical types of tea grown commercially: China types, Assam types, Cambodia types, and hybrids of China and Assam types. The China type is the tea bush that produced the first teas which were embraced by the Chinese, and later by most of the western world as well. These shrubs are generally short in stature, with a relatively small leaf, and good cold tolerance. The Assam type is relatively taller than the China type, has somewhat larger leaves, and is frost sensitive and thus not well suited for colder regions. Oddly enough, the Assam plant, which is indigenous to India, was not the type first cultivated there by the British. Instead, China type seeds were imported and planted out, only to eventually be replaced by the higher yielding and native Assam type. Hybrids of the two types are also widely cultivated in a number of growing regions. As might be expected, they tend to be of mid stature, with medium size leaves, and have fair cold tolerance.

Productive Life of a Tea Plant
The productive life of a single tea plant is approximately 100 years if carefully cultivated. Propagation of these plants occurs either by seed or vegetative means. If estates employ the seed method, workers germinate the seeds in nurseries until they are ready for planting - usually a period of about nine months. Such plants have tap root systems which make them more tolerant of drought. The most common method today, however, is vegetative propagation where workers take a mature leaf with auxiliary bud and internode and grow it in a nursery. The auxiliary bud grows into a shoot, and the bottom end of the internode grows into a fibrous root system. Because most tea estates in Sri Lanka and India are over 100 years old, seedling tea fields are replanted with clonal (vegetative) tea plants systematically.