Great Britain is the nation of tea-drinkers. The colonies follow the mother country, and where the Englishman goes into the wilds, he carries his tea pot and a supply of the dried leaf. The tea con sumed in Australasia averages over seven pounds a year for every man, woman, and child! England herself does not come up to this record. The whole United Kingdom averages a little over six pounds per capita. The United States consumes one and a third pounds. With us, coffee is the breakfast beverage. In the British possessions it is breakfast tea, first, last, and all the time. Tea again in the afternoon, and coffee at the end of dinner — for the stomach's sake! The tea plant is a shrub that may grow to the height of thirty feet, if left to its own way. The leaves are leathery and tapering, with saw-toothed edges, varying greatly in size on the same twig. The flowers vary in color from white to deep rose, their waxy petals and central bunch of yellow stamens making them look like single wild roses. The seeds are usually three, a single one being borne in each of three cells of the dry capsule.
A near relative of the camellia, the tea plant deserves to be cultivated for its bloom and its beautiful foliage. It requires a climate that is at least warm temperate, so it is not hardy north of our Gulf states. In these it is by no means an uncommon plant.
The leaf is the only commercial product of the tea plant. For this it has been cultivated foi five thousand years, if we can believe the ancient Chinese, writings that make mention of it. Until 500 A. D., tea leaves were used as a medicine only. Then tea became a beverage, and sprang into popularity in the Orient.
In Assam, a province of India that borders on China, a species of tea has been found growing wild, and botanists have considered this fact as evidence that this is the ancestral home of the plant. Tradition says that China is its home. Nobody can prove either claim. The interesting fact is that from the wild tea have sprung varieties that thrive in all tropical countries, and the industry based on tea culture is one of the most important in the commercial world.
America, which is not a good customer of the tea merchant, buys each year over four million pounds from Japan alone. Fifteen million dollars a year we spend for tea in oriental markets. And we are not obliged to buy abroad either, for tea from South Carolina plantations is now to be had.
Farmers' Bulletin No. 301, of the Department of Agriculture at Washington tells all about this. Write for George F. Mitchell's report on "Home grown Tea," stating the number of the bulletin as above, and it will be sent you free.
Very amusing are the accounts of the early attempt's to introduce to a skeptical public the plants we now use so commonly that we assume they have always been used. China taught the other Eastern countries to drink tea. Tradition says that in the days of "good Queen Bess" a package of tea was sent to an old couple in England by their son who was a sailor, and saw much of the world. They brewed the tea as he told them to, but threw away the brown liquid, and ate the leaves spread on their bread! About the middle of the seventeenth century a tea house was opened in London, but the new beverage was expensive and did not come into general use until many years later, when British India began to send home tea grown in her own tea gardens. The beginning of this great enterprise dates at the year 1840.
The contest between India and China, the two great rivals for the tea trade of civilized countries, has been going on ever since, and the British growers have beaten their competitors. But China has a big home market, and Asiatic countries deal largely with their neighbor on the east. And the demand for tea is growing in all countries except the United States where it is falling off.
The tea seed is started in a special seed bed, and the little plants set out irrigated in nursery rows that are well tended, and sheltered from the sun. When about a foot high they are transplanted and cultivated until they are three years old. Then they are well covered with young leaf shoots called "flush," and the first picking is done. As the branches lengthen, pruning is needed to induce the sprouting of new leafy shoots. This "flush" is constantly renewed, and the bearing of flowers is discouraged.
The plucking is hand-work of a very particular kind. It is an open question whether or not tea can be profitably raised in the Southern States, where labor costs so much more than in China and India and Ceylon. There coolie labor costs very little. Tea growing is practicable in this country. But tea harvesting may be impracti cable.
If one could only be sure he is getting what he pays for, he might be more interested in the fol lowing classification and names of brands used in Ceylon. The three leaves nearest the tip of the shoots make the "pekoe" teas. The larger leaves below make "souchong," and then "congou" teas. The tip leaf, smallest of all,makes" flowery pekoe"; the second leaf, "orange pekoe"; the third, just "pekoe." A mixture of this size with the next makes "pekoe-souchong" tea. The younger the leaf and smaller, the more delicate and expensive the tea.
Green tea and black tea are differently made. All tea leaves may be made into either, though some varieties are more easily converted into black than others. And green teas are made from leaves grown in cooler climates, while black teas are the more common product of the warmer regions where tea is grown. Some regions make both kinds.
Green tea is made by rolling the leaves and then drying them. Rolling breaks the cells that contain the refreshing, stimulating principle, theine, and the astringent acid, tannin, that gives flavor to the beverage. Without the process, the flavor would remain locked up in the leaf cells. The rolling allows the oil to spread over the leaf as it dries. Green tea which is laid out in the open air after the rolling process until a fermenting and oxidizing process takes place changes to a dark color, from which it later takes the name, "black tea," Different countries have their own methods of curing tea. They involve much special knowledge and skill, much use of the hands and sometimes the feet! This course of moulding, rolling, tread ing, and firing is a secret in some parts of China. But the essential processes are known, and machin ery has been substituted for coolie labor in some places. The product so pleases the tea experts that more modern methods will surely supersede the time-honored, primitive ones.
Green tea is distrusted because coloring matter is often used to give it a more attractive appear ance. Since the American trade demands a green tea, and does not exclude, by law, teas con taining injurious dyes, we can hardly blame the shrewd manufacturers for catering to our taste.