Tale of the Old Tea Trees #1
I'll tell you a tale about old tea trees 🙂
Once upon a time, several thousand years ago, in the land now called "South of the Clouds," a tea seed sprouted.
Time passed as usual, and more and more tea plants were born from his seeds.
The clouds have changed, the people have changed, and the generations of people who have always cared for this tree have changed. Today, this tea tree is visited by people from all over the world.
It is called Xiangzhuqing 香竹箐 (pronounced Xiang-zhu-qing) and can be found in Jinxiu Village 锦秀村, Xiaowanzhen Town 小湾镇, near Fengqing County City 凤庆县 in Yunnan Province, China.
The circumference of the trunk of this tree is 5.84m, its diameter is 1.85m and it is 10.6m high.
In 1982, an isotope half-life analysis of a sample from this tree was performed in Beijing by Mr. Wang Guangzhi 王广志, who determined its age to be over 3,200 years.
Immediately, another doctor of botany from Sun Yat-sen University came to verify this assessment and, based on his research, confirmed this statement.
Further research was carried out in 2004 by Doctor of Agricultural Sciences from Tokyo, Mr. Masashi Omori, who, in collaboration with the Tea Research Center of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, concluded that the age of the tree is between 3200 and 3500 years. Today, this tree is called chazu 茶祖 – Tea Ancestor. In its vicinity, on an area of 2000 hectares, there are 3 other trees with a trunk diameter of over 1m, and there are over 2000 trees with a trunk diameter of around 0.5m. All of these trees are considered to be thousand-year-old trees here and are often referred to as Yeshengdanzhu 锟活单株 – wild individual trees. In 2013, this type of tea tree was designated Dalizhong 大理种 – Taliensis, i.e. a different species than Camellia sinensis. Some of these trees have received the protection label of the so-called Guchashu baohupai 古茶树保護牌, which in practice means supervising protection from vandals. In 2019, the Chinese government issued a “Guideline for the Management of the Protection of Ancient Tea Trees and Gardens, which emphasizes the principle of sustainability based on ecological, economic and social benefits and coordinated development.” In practice, this means regulated harvesting of tea leaves from these marked trees. For example, regulation may mean harvesting only in spring and in certain quantities. Since the tea tree is an economic crop for ethnic people, not all such trees have received protective labels and more tea is produced from them.
To give you an idea of how many such old trees there are, I will provide the following information from the book:
Chayuandili / Lincang 茶源地理 / 临沧: In Fengjing xian County alone, the wild tree communities Yesheng guchashu junluo 凤庆县生古茶树群落 number 126,600 trees (Camellia Taliensis species) on an area of 12,440 hectares. And we are still talking about the species C.Taliensis. This number does not include two other “Large-leaved cultivars” of the Chinese tea tree (Camellia sinensis var. assamica), namely Mengku daye zhong 勐库大叶种 and Fengqing daye zhong 凤庆大叶种 (often also changye 长叶), which, however, do not reach a similar age as Taliensis.
I would just like to briefly mention that the price of leaves from old trees is derived mainly from whether it is a single tree (and also from which tree it is), or whether it is several trees in one place, or finally mixed leaves from different trees of the same species or cultivar.
Boom boom boom
Next time, maybe there will be a story about Large-leaved cultivars 🙂
References:
https://www.puercn.com/puerchazs/peccd/157071.html
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/54825475
http://www.513tc.com/article-1905.html
https://www.xsbn.gov.cn/192.news.detail.dhtml?news_id=71924
kniha Chayuandili / Lincang 茶源地理 / 临沧