The tea tree

Tea plantations look like a huge forest made up of small trees that rarely reach above 1.5m in height. When their trunks are thick and gnarled, they show that their age is much greater than their small size would suggest.

In their natural state tea plants can reach a height of 15 to 20m. If they are to be cultivated they are kept at a height of about 1.20m by regular pruning, in order to form what is known as the "plucking table", which facilitates hand plucking and encourages bud growth.

Pruned and shaped by man over 50 or so years, the tea plants become real dwarf-trees and form strange plantations, a mixture of massive green covers and miniature forests.

The tea plant belongs to the Camelia family. There are two main varieties of the camelia sinensis or thea sinensis: the Chinese type, known as sinensis, with small and olive green leaves; and the Assam variety, known as assamica, which has large, pale, plump leaves. Other varieties have now appeared as a result of hybridization, grafting, propagation from cuttings etc, with many hybrids known as jats or clonals.

The cultivated tea plant is a bush with evergreen leaves, the upper surfaces of which are shiny and the undersides matt and paler. The young leaves and buds are covered with a light, silvery down, hence their name known as "Pekoe" after the Chinese word Pak-ho which means "fine hair" or "down".

Go further with The Tea School.