MANUAL OP THE nIlAGIRI DISTRICT. 517 



individual plants, even in cases in which the seed from which the CH. XXIX. 

 plants were raised has been obtained direct from China. In its Z 



native country it has to endure great extremes both of heat and 



cold, and this natural hardiness is its sole merit. It is therefore 

 the variety in some respects best calculated to succeed in the 

 highlands of the western division. 



The indigenous plant forms a marked contrast to the above, —the 

 In the first place it is not a shrub, but a forest tree of moderate i°<i^g®"""''- 

 size, found in its wild state in the warm, moist valleys of Assam 

 and Munnipoor. Unchecked, it will grow up with a single stem to 

 a height of 25 to 30 feet. It has large light green leaves, of a very 

 soft texture, broad in the centre, but very acuminate at the apex. 

 This plant, as its natural habitat implies, is partial to tropical 

 climates, and although it can, when two years old, with its roots 

 well established, bear an extreme degree of heat with impunity, it 

 suffers very much both in health and productiveness if subjected 

 to frost or cold winds. At the higher elevations of these hills the 

 growth of this variety is partially stunted. Its cultivation there- 

 fore, by itself, in gardens should not ordinarily be attempted at 

 higher elevation than from 5 to 6,000 feet. On the eastern 

 slopes of these hills, how low down tea of this variety may be 

 grown is a point we have yet to ascertain, but on the western 

 side, the whole of the Wainad, or at any rate all the lands suitable 

 for coffee, are well suited for the cultivation of this and the hybrid 

 variety. The plants seldom bear much seed unless allowed to 

 grow unchecked. 



I now come to the most generally useful variety of the tea plant — the 

 in cultivation, viz., the hybrid plant. A first-class hybrid combines hybrid. 

 a great deal of the hardiness of the China plant with the 

 vigorous growth, size, softness of leaf, and great productiveness 

 of the indigenous plant. It seldom bears sufficient seed to 

 hinder its yield of leaf, and the seed it does produce has too 

 great a marketable value to make it advisable to strip it from the 

 trees before it reaches maturity. There are, as is natural, plants 

 of this kind of every type and quality, and although a garden 

 may be planted with seed produced by bushes of the highest 

 x;lass, it may often be no easy matter to find among the plants so 

 produced any half dozen exactly alike. Let it, however, approach 

 the China plant ever so closely in appearance, it will be found to 

 yield more than twice as much leaf as the latter, and, on the 

 other hand, however closely it may resemble the indigenous, it 

 will be found possessed of a more vigorous constitution and less 

 liable than either of the other varieties to disease. It may be 

 grown with advantage as high as 6 or 7,000 feet in sheltered 

 localities ; ^ and as low down as the indigenous plant is found to 



^The plant flourishes in Ootacamand at elevations approaching 8,000 feet.— Ed. 



