THE TEA PLANT 



Duars and 

 Darjeeling. 



CAMELLIA 

 THEA 



Cultivation 



The tea land of Chittagong resembles that in Sylhet. 



Duars, Terai and Darjeeling The Duars and Terai, districts lying in a 

 strip 10 miles or more wide at the foot of the Himalaya, south from Sikkim 

 and Bhutan, contain soils of several types. The most characteristic is, however, 

 a huge bank of stiff and yet porous red soil on which lie some of the most success- 

 ful tea estates in India. In Darjeeling the land differs from the foregoing in 

 not being alluvium, but formed in situ from the rocks of the districts. It is a 

 clayey and yet highly porous soil, which is rich in mineral plant-food constituents. 

 The following are analyses of type soils from the Duars and Darjeeling: 



Sooth India. 



Propaga- 

 tion. 



Flowering. 



South India. The soils of the remainder of the districts of North India 

 hardly call for remark. Those of the south country the Nilgiris, Travancore 

 and the Wynaad are as a whole characterised by a large proportion of clay, 

 and yet by a very granular texture. They are all hill soils probably formed in 

 situ. The analyses (due to Bamber) of two fairly typical soils from Travancore 

 are shown below : 



PROPAGATION. The tea plant is invariably grown from seed. 

 Attempts to propagate on a large scale from cuttings or by layerings 

 have never been very successful. It is difficult, in fact, to get the cuttings 

 to strike, and the method of layering does not allow of rapid enough in- 

 crease of plants to be ever used. The real reason, however, of the avoid- 

 ance of these methods is the ease with which plants are grown from seed ; 

 and for supply of seed, special bushes or even special seed-gardens are 

 reserved. 



Seed. Plants used for seed -production are allowed to grow naturally, 

 without any pruning. They thus form trees up to 30 or even 40 feet high, 

 more or less resembling a poplar in shape. The " China " plant is, how- 

 ever, an exception, and rarely grows to a height of more than 10 or 12 

 feet. All the forms flower in North India from September, and the fruits 

 take a year to come to maturity. A second small lot of flowers often 



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