FLOWERING SHRUBS 



the State of New Jersey, where the leaves of the Ceanothus 

 were first adopted as a substitute for the Chinese Tea-plant. 

 Even to this day Americans will cross to Ontario in summer 

 to gather quantities of the leaves to carry back from our 

 plains, where it is found in great abundance. And while 

 they commend the virtues of the plant, they, no doubt, 

 recount the tales of Avar, trouble and privation endured in 

 the old struggle waged by their grandfathers and great- 

 grandfathers for independence, when, casting away the more 

 costly tea, they had recourse to a humble native shrub to 

 supply a luxury that was even then felt as a want and a 

 necessity in their homes. 



The leaf of the New Jersey Tea resembles that of the 

 Chinese very much, and if it wants the peculiarly fragrant 

 flavor that we prize so highly in the genuine article, yet it is 

 perfectly wholesome, and if prepared by heat in a similar 

 way might approach more nearly to the qualities of the 

 foreign article. Indeed, we are not sure but that it really 

 does form one of the many adulterations that are mixed up 

 with the teas of commerce for which we are content to pay 

 so highly. Many years ago I was applied to by persons in 

 Liverpool to supply their firm with large quantities of the 

 leaves, no doubt for the purpose of adulterating the foreign 

 teas in which they dealt. Of course, the proposal was 

 declined. 



An old friend, one of the sons of a U. E. Loyalist, told me 

 that for some years after leaving the United States (the 

 family were from Vermont), the genuine Chinese Tea was 

 rarely to be met with in the houses of the settlers, especially 

 with such as lived in lonely backwoods settlements, that for 

 the most part they made use of infusions of the leaves of the 

 Redroot, or New Jersey Tea, as they had learned to call it, 

 of Labrador Tea (Ledum latifolium), Sweet- fern (Comptonia 

 aspleni folia) , Mountain Mint or other aromatic herbs, or 



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