Tea : its effects, medicinal and moral.

  • George Gabriel Sigmond
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tea : its effects, medicinal and moral. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    far passed through the country without having seen a single plant of the tea-shrub ; but here we found it used as a common plant for hedge-rows, to divide the gardens and fruit groves, but not particularly cultivated for its leaves.” The tea-plant is a beautiful shrub, bearing some resemblance to the myrtle: it bears a yellow flower, which is exceedingly fragrant. Its similarity to the camellia in its general appearance, in the shape of its leaf, in the formation of its floral developments, had struck the common observer, and it was re- marked that the Camellia Oleifera bore so strong a resemblance, that even the practised eye had great difficulty in distinguishing one from the other when out of flower. A question has been agitated amongst botanists whether the thea be not a camellia. Dr. Wallich considers the two genera differ widely from each other, and that this is marked by the formation of their respective fruits, in both of which it is a roundish, more or less triangular, dry capsule, of three distinct cells, containing one solitary seed or nut; and it bursts at the time of its full maturity vertically, by means of three fissures extending from the top of its capsule towards the base; but this bursting, or, as it is botanically termed, dehiscence, takes place differently in the two cap- sules. In the tea, it proceeds along the middle of the lobes or angles, thus six valves are formed, each lobe splitting into two hemispherical valves. In the camellia, it bursts along the middle of each side, consequently, alternating with the corners into three very distinct valves. The general outline of the capsule of the tea is triangular, divided into three