Tea bush: description, features, varieties, cultivation and recommendations

The name of Chinese tea Thea sinensis was fixed with the light hand of the Swedish scientist Karl Linnaeus, and thanks to him, Europeans just call this amazing drink. In 1758, they were given the name of a plant in honor of the Greek goddess of wisdom. And today a drink made of leaves gathered from a tea bush is popular. People with great pleasure drink it, finding cheerfulness, freshness of spirit and clarity of mind.

Chinese tea: description, properties

The Chinese tea bush is an evergreen shrub of the tea family (from Asia). Its leaves are used in the preparation of a tonic drink, which has been the most widespread in the world since ancient times.

The leaves of the tea bush contain up to those percent of caffeine, and this is about twice as much as in coffee beans. In addition to leaf (baihovogo), produced soluble and pressed tea. Its leading manufacturers are India, Kenya, Sri Lanka and China.

The wild tea bush reaches a height of up to 9 meters, but it is cultivated in the form of shrubs growing no higher than 1.5 m, abundantly branching and carrying numerous elliptical or lanceolate, finely toothed leaves. They have a size in length from 5 to 13 cm. White flowers of the bush produce a gentle pleasant smell. The leaves contain a lot of vitamins (4 times more than in lemon), caffeine, tannin.

Legends and historical facts

According to one of the legends, the first to start drinking tea was a Chinese ruler, who appreciated the unique fragrant smell of the leaves of a tea bush, accidentally showered in his pot with boiling water at the stake. After that, an incredibly wonderful fragrance spread around. The tea bush was the owner of these leaves.

In an old Japanese tale it is claimed that the fallen leaves turned into tea leaves, the owner of which was a man. He could not fall asleep and therefore kept his eyes open all the time.

In Europe, for the first time, Dutch tea was brought in by Dutchmen in 1610, and in England tea fell in 1664th. London has since been considered the world's tea capital. The average Briton drank about 5 cups of this tonic drink per day. For the first time in America, he appeared in Boston in 1714.

To grow tea began in China in ancient times. Japan engaged in this in the Middle Ages, and then it began to be cultivated in Ceylon and in India (1870). Since the 1880s, tea has grown successfully in America (North Carolina and Texas), but due to the high cost of labor, this culture there could not get accustomed. Widely cultivated tea bush before World War II on the vast areas of China, Japan, India, Taiwan, Ceylon and Sumatra. Then tea plantations began to appear in other countries of the world.

Growth conditions

Grown tea in the fields and on terraced hilly slopes. Plants usually form, pruning, do not touch only the seed specimens. In the East, the tea bush perfectly develop at annual rates of precipitation from about 2500 to 5100 mm. The plant loves a warm climate with an air temperature of 10-32 ° Celsius and moderate altitudes above sea level. Especially good for it are acidic soils.

In addition to a minor annual pruning in the spring period, the third year is usually made for light heavy, and for the tenth - heavy (almost to the ground level). The remaining part of the bush gives the shoots, forming a thicker plant with several main stems. As a result, every 40 days a good crop is removed from it. 25-50 years old lives a tea bush.

Tea can be of several kinds. In nature, it can represent a low tree. Some tea bushes can live up to 100 years. In the middle of summer (July) buds appear near the tea bush, and flowers blossom in September. Flowering continues for quite a long time, almost throughout the whole autumn, after which the boxes are formed, within which mature seeds have a brownish color.

From the bush the youngest and juicy leaves are collected for tea making. These are the first three leaves and the upper kidney, called flushes. The latter are processed, after which different types of tea are obtained , depending on the method of their processing.

Tea bush at home

At home, this plant is very rarely grown, although it has many advantages: long blossom with snow-white fragrant flowers (several months), unpretentiousness, long life.

Most importantly - the tea bush is not only beautiful and original, it still brings and benefits its leaves. The brewed toning drink raises the mood and gives strength and energy. Tea bush grow at home is quite easy. Just take into account the conditions of its growth in nature and adhere to them.

Special ways of consuming tea

Initially, the tea leaf was used as vegetable seasoning, and in Burma it is still marinated. Pressed tea in the form of a brick or tile in Mongolia, after steaming in water, is eaten with creamy butter or with toasted barley and wheat croup ("tsamba").

Some people drink tea with salt. In Japan and China there are tea religious ceremonies: the Taoists apply it as an elixir of immortality, and Buddhists drink it during meditation. The Japanese also add white jasmine flowers while brewing tea, Thais chew a leaf, and in Arab countries they drink tea, brewed with mint.

Wastes from tea production also do not disappear, caffeine is extracted from them, which is used in medicine as a stimulant and is added to non-alcoholic drinks. One of the most popular drinks is tea with ice. Such a soft drink is often drunk in the USA.

Varieties of tea bush: dependence on harvesting and processing

The very first commercial output ("flushes") is collected for the fifth year. Sometimes the 3rd and 4th leaves are collected from above, if they are juicy and soft enough.

To produce a black (well-fermented) product, first the leaves of the tea bush on the shelves are wilted, thus ensuring their weak oxidation, after which they are twisted, destroying the cell walls (oxidation continues). In the following, the leaves are burnt in special baskets over burning charcoal or in specially equipped machines. If fermentation is not fully completed, then depending on its depth, first get yellow or red tea. When the leaves are pre-steamed to prevent fermentation, green tea is subsequently obtained.

The highest grade of black tea is called pekoe, which translates from Chinese as "white hair". In this way, the most tender young (covered with downy) leaves of a tea bush were designated.

Conclusion

It should be noted that in 1817 in Russia was planted the first tea bush (botanical Nikitsky garden in the Crimea). By that time, the drink from Russians was very popular. Then it began to grow in Georgia, and in the regions of Sochi it appeared since 1900.

Azerbaijan appeared also in the beginning of XX century. During the Soviet period, about 100,000 hectares of territory were occupied by tea plantations, and processed products were processed to 60,000 tons per year.