— 264 — 



,, position is, therefore, only preserved to allow of more careful élaboration 

 ,,in the future. They constitute a séries that blend into the Manipur stock 

 ,,on the one hand, into that of Yunnan on the other. The leaves are 

 ,,stnaller, thick, coarser, more acutely serrated and much less smooth 

 ,,than the Manipur, but distinctly elliptic in shape. The Formosan leaf, 

 ,,recently brought into notice in connection with the inquiry into Oolong 

 ,,tea, is a little more oblong than the Burma and Shan leaf, but otherwise 

 ,,is very similar '). I hâve not seen, however, more than a few separated 

 ,, leaves of the Oolong plant and cannot be certain regarding its identity. 

 „So far as 1 can judge it stands every chance of proving a distinct and 

 „well-marked race, fully worthy of separate récognition." 



„Race 6, Yunnan and Cfunese. — Too little is known of races of the 

 ,,tea plant in China to allow of a classification being furnished similar to 



„that given for India In most herbaria the plant is fairly 



,,well represented from China, but by no means exhaustively so, until in 

 ,,very récent times, more especially through Dr. Hhnry's collections, 

 ,,Dr. Henry has studied the tea plant of the forests of Yunnan, and bis 

 ,, spécimens hâve been widely distributed in herbaria. He tells me that it 

 „is a small, sparsely branched tree. met with under the dense shade of 

 ,, forests -- precisely the condition of the Indian truly wild forms." 



Now hère and with regard to the other varieties described by Watt, 

 1 am greatly at variance wilh this author as to the correctness of his 

 classification. We will discuss this malter further below, and hère only 

 State that in his opinion a large proportion of the tea grown in China is 

 so closely connected with the Assam tea plant, that he classes the latter 

 with the former in one variety, the ancient T. viridis L., whereas in my 

 opinion, if China tea should not be made a différent species, it should in 

 any case by no means be coupled to the Assam form group. Likewise, as we 

 will observe in the sequel, in Watt's other varieties a close amalgamating 

 of China and hybrid teas has taken place, which 1 cannot approve of either. 



Watt supports his view, concerning the Yun-nan race, by thefollow- 

 ing herbarium samples. First of ail the ancient spécimen of Browne and 

 BuLKLEY, mentioned before; next a sample collected by Fortune in 1860 

 near Yeddo, and Fortunh's Thea viridis from Ning-po, both of which are 

 in the Kew herbarium. Further the numbers 9722 (Kew) and lOS??'"» (Kew 

 and Berlin, the latter being represented in Fig. 5), collected by Henry 

 in Yun-nan near the Red River, growing there, as we saw in the second 

 chapter, in a wild state, and, according to Watt (p. 75), „both exactly 

 „intermediate in type to the Burman and the Naga hill forms". I certainly 

 cannot agrée with this représentation, apparently intimating a very near 

 relationship to the Indian forms. 1 am on the contrary rather inclined to 

 put Henry's plants under von Siebold's variety macrophylla, but that they 

 are somewhat smaller-leaved than the latter; their leaf measuring 110-120 



1) I am not acquainted with the plant that yields the Formosan Oolong-tea, but the 

 tea plant „ubique cnlta", collected by U. FauRIE among his Plantae Formosanae 

 (1903, nr. 52) shows no divergence from the common China tea in any respect. 



