Saturday, September 20, 2008

What is tea? The History




From Wikipedia

"Camellia sinensis is the tea plant, the plant species whose leaves and leaf buds are used to produce tea. It is of the genus Camellia (Chinese: 茶花; pinyin: Cháhuā), a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae. White tea, green tea, oolong and black tea are all harvested from this species, but are processed differently to attain different levels of oxidation. Kukicha (twig tea) is also harvested from camellia sinensis, but uses twigs and stems rather than leaves. The name sinensis means Chinese in Latin. Camellia is taken from the Latinized name of Rev. Georg Kamel, S.J. (1661-1706), a Czech-born Jesuit priest who became both a prominent botanist and a missionary to the Philippines (it is not uncommon for members of the Catholic Jesuit order to combine careers in scholarship with their religious work). Though Kamel did not discover or name the plant, Carl Linnaeus, the creator of the system of taxonomy still used today, chose his name for the genus of this tree to honor Kamel's contributions to science. Older names for the tea plant include Thea bohea, Thea sinensis and Thea viridis. Camellia sinensis is native to mainland South and Southeast Asia, but is today cultivated across the world, in tropical and subtropical regions. It is an evergreen shrub or small tree that is usually trimmed to below two metres (six feet) when cultivated for its leaves. It has a strong taproot. The flowers are yellow-white, 2.5–4 cm in diameter, with 7 to 8 petals.

The seeds of Camellia sinensis and Camellia oleifera can be pressed to yield tea oil, a sweetish seasoning and cooking oil that should not be confused with tea tree oil, an essential oil that is used for medical and cosmetical purposes and originates from the leaves of a different plant."

click here for the complete wikipedia description.

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