The Tea Named Bing Is
The Second Growth, Gathered In April, And Siriglo Is The Last Growth,
Gathered In May And June; Both Of These Being Gently Dried Over The Fire
In Taches Or Pans.
The tea shrub is an evergreen, being in flower from
October to January, and the seed ripens in the September or October
following, so that both flower and seed may be gathered at the same
time; but for one fully ripened seed, an hundred are abortive.
There are
the two sorts of seeds mentioned by Father Le Compte, in his description
of tea; and what be describes as a third sort, under the name of
slymie pease, consists merely of the young flower-buds, not yet open.
The seed vessels of the tea tree are three-capsular, each capsule
containing one nut or seed; and though often two or one of these only
come to perfection, yet the vestiges of the rest may easily be
discerned. It grows naturally in a dry gravelly soil on the sides of
hills, without any cultivation, in several places of this island.
[Footnote 331: Fo-kien is almost certainly here meant - E.]
Le Compte is mistaken in saying that the Chinese are ignorant of the art
of grafting; for I nave seen many of his paradoxical tallow-trees
ingrafted here, besides trees of other sorts. When they ingraft, they do
not slit the stock as we do, but slice off the outside of the stock, to
which they apply the graft, which is cut sloping on one side, to
correspond with the slice on the stock, bringing the bark of the slice
up on the outside of the graft, after which the whole is covered up with
mud and straw, exactly as we do.
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