TEA AND THE TEA PLANT. 



79 



repeat, this, far more than the Bohea form, gives evidence of being pm-ely and 

 simply a cultivated variety. In fact var. stricta might even be spoken of as but 

 a diminutive form of var. Bohea that had often been confused with or mistaken 

 for the next variety. 



Var. b LASiocALYX (see fig. 11) : Thca lasiocalyx, Planchon MS. (recorded on 

 a sheet in WallicWs Herb, at Linn. Soc, also Kew Herb.) ; T. viridis, Wall., 

 Cat., n. 979; bat in Wall., Herb., at the Linnean Society, n. 979 consists of 

 two specimens- — one said to be from Singapore, the other from Penang. 



A small bush copiously branched and clothed w^ith many small linear-oblong 

 (or obovate), acute cuneate leaves, about one to two inches in length, and half 

 an inch in diameter, thick, fleshy, of a pale lemon-green colour when dry, 

 almost quite glabrous, except a few shaggy hairs near the midrib on the under 

 surface, and with the minute, scale-like shining points below (described in 

 connection with vars. Bohea and stricta) very abundant. Inflorescence 

 axillary, crowded on the erect young shoots in the form of umbellate clusters 

 of three to five flowers, pedicels very short, but with two or three scales and 

 joints. Calyx forming what simulates two distinct whorls, the inner erect and 

 the outer somewhat spreading, sepals small, round, more or less densely coated 

 with adpressed, rust-coloured, shining hairs. 



Habitat. — Malacca and Penang, but probably only cultivated. Wallich's 

 specimens are stated to have been cultivated in Penang, and they bear the dates 

 of 1822 and 1829. Cuming collected the same plant in Malacca in 1841 

 (Nos. 2,267 and 2,268 (photographed in fig. 11)). Griflith has two samples, one from 

 Malacca (named T. Bohea), the othev apparentW grown in India from seed supposed 

 to have come from China. There is also in the Kew Herbarium a second sample 

 found mider cultivation in India, namely, in Hohenacker's herbarium, collected at 

 Mangalor in 1847. In Gay's herbarium there is a sample said to have been 

 grown in the Luxembourg Garden from seed furnished by Hard}' in 1816. The 

 sheet contains both this plant and a sample of C. thea, var. stricta. 



This cmiously interesting tropical variety of C. thea, Link, may possibly, 

 by futm-e botanists, be regarded as a distinct species. I have preferred, in 

 removing it from the obscurity and ambiguity with which it has hitherto been 

 enveloped, to retain it as a variety of the tea plant — first, because it appears to 

 be cultivated in the belief that it is one of the forms of the true tea plant ; 

 secondly, because it is a more distinctly tropical plant than any of the other 

 known varieties ; and thirdly, because it may have originated some of the so-caUed 

 varieties or hybrids of the tea plant, such as var. stricta. The present plant 

 has not been recorded from China, nor for the matter of that has var. stricta 

 any well-defined position in China, notwithstanding the fact that by Indian 

 planters it is denominated " China tea." The specimens of var. lasiocalijx seen 

 by me were mostly procured in the Mala}' Peninsula, but whether exclusively 

 from cultivated or some of them naturalised or wild plants has not been stated. 

 The following authors (in sequence of date of pubhcation) who deal with the 

 species of Ternstroemacice of Malacca and Penang or the adjacent tracts, do not 

 appear to have described the plant here indicated: Miquel, " Fl. Ind. Bat.," 

 1860, i. pp. 189-90; King, "Materials for a Fl. Mai. Penin.," i. (pt. 2, 1890), 

 pp. 125-46 ; Curtis, " Cat. Fl. PI. Isl. Penang," 1892 ; Ridley, " Fl. Singapore " 

 (" Jour. Straits Branch Eoy. As. Soc"), 1900, pp. 48-9. 



I have mentioned these works because the silence regarding this plant 

 may denote that it may have existed mider cultivation, and have been 

 mistaken for the true tea plant, which, being introduced, was not thought 

 worthy of a position in works of the nature indicated. But this silence rather 

 heightens the interest in the plant, smce it is a well-marked and easily recognised 

 form of tea, that, as already suggested, may have played an important part in 

 the growth of the present tea trade, prior to the establishment of var. viridis 

 as essentially the tea plant " of modern commerce. 



