Do you know the difference between Black & Green Tea?

Do you know the difference between Black & Green Tea? 6/10/2010
I am sure that like me you were well aware that Tea comes from the 2 to 4 top leaves of a variety of Camellia and not from Beans from a tree like Coffee. But do you know that difference between Green & Black tea? I knew that the very best teas were/are those only picked from the two top leaves from the variety of Camellia called “Sinensis”. {Which is just one of about 90 different species of camellia and not one of the 3 main varieties you see in many Gardens. And many currently in full flower. (At least In Australia!)}
I knew all this (from my time working with a Camellia connoisseur many, many years ago now.) Yes, I knew that, but I didn’t know the real difference between Black and green tea , although I have drunken and like both! Do you know the difference? Apart from the colour that is! Did you even know that there were in fact six basic varieties of tea? They are white, yellow, green, black, oolong, and pu-erh. (Other types of tea come from other types of plants, but these 6 all come from the same plant?) Well they do, but the differences are determined by how they are processed.
According to the “Hot word” from Word of the Day” for Oct.6th – 2010:”Green tea, for example is dried, but not wilted, and it doesn’t go through enzymatic oxidation, which the tea industry calls fermentation. Black tea is wilted and also fully oxidized. The process to make oolong tea is somewhere between the two. It is wilted, bruised, and partially oxidized.
The taste of green tea is often described as light and grassy, while black tea usually has a stronger, sweeter taste. Oolong tastes more similar to green tea with a sweet aftertaste.
Many Americans may not have heard of oolong. The Earl Grey tea blend, though is far more familiar. Its distinct flavor and aroma comes the addition of an oil that has been extracted from the rind of the bergamot orange.”
I’m guessing that many Australians (&at least this one are like the many Americans mentioned above, and have not heard of “Oolong tea.” Have you?
In fact have you heard/tasted white or even yellow, let alone “Pu-erh” tea? Your comments please?

Obsessed or dedicated?

As mentioned in earlier blog, I used to work for a guy who, as a retirement hobby, grew a few camellias. A few thousand that is.

Now you may wonder why he grew so many and what he did with them. In my previous blog I explained that he was interested in trying to grow and name new types of flowers. In other words, to introduce to the public a ‘New’ Camellia. I don’t know how many different types and colours of Camellias there are already but there are heaps, and so finding a new one was never going to be easy, hence the large number of seedlings he grew each year, in the hope of finding that elusive one. Which I also mentioned previously he did, once! But what did he do with the literally thousands of un-needed plants?

Well Camellias, as well as being slow to germinate from seed and needing up to seven years to flower for the first time, are also not very vigorous growers, particularly with some of the more desirables colours. So what happens is that when the plant flowers and is assessed as not being suitable to grow on for its own flowers, it is put aside as Graft stock.

Here the whole plant (5 – 7 years of growth,) is chopped off a few inches from the ground and a cutting or graft from a more desirable named-variety is grafted on and this new plant grows on the old rootstock, and thus more named varieties become readily available. Not that my friend ever sold many.

As stated previously money was not the issue here. Propagating and promoting camellias was!

During my time there, although technically I worked for his son, when work was “light”, I spent a bit of time helping “Dad” with his “Babies”. Even to the point of helping him take and plant many of these new named plants over to the Olinda Rhododendron Gardens where they graciously set aside a large area for the Camellias to be grown. So most of Len’s earlier rejects were turned into more desirable plants and given to the community for future generations to admire.

Anyway as work was “Light” for a while, I moved on. Some ten years later I found myself as temporary Pastor of Wagga-Ashmont Church in Wagga Wagga briefly (before we headed of overseas for Missionary work). By that time Len had passed on but his legacy to the Camellia community hadn’t. You see in Wagga Wagga’s Botanical garden they had put in a Chinese Camellia Garden with the help of a Sister City in China. Of course most of the Camellias plants were Australian sourced. And on the Plaque at the gates of this garden are listed about 20 of the plant sponsors to this Project. Prominent among them is the name of my friend and his wife. Although He would have shunned the personal publicity, he would be among the first to step up to promote any project that would promote his beloved Camellias.

Even when planting at the Rhododendron Gardens, he was aware that, as Camellias were slow growing, that he would never see the established plants in their full glory, but he was committed to leave them behind not for his own enjoyment or benefit but for the benefit of future generations.

So you see a lot of time and effort, literally years of time and effort, went into a project that he would never fully see to its full glory, and it not only never gave him anything financially, but cost him financially, it did give him the chance to do what he loved and the opportunity to add something “new” hopefully to the Camellia world and even to giving the Wider Garden world and general public a thing of beauty and joy.

How about you? Do you see everything you do or try only in personal or financial terms or are you prepared to give of yourself for years to try and give something back to the world. Something that you may never live to see and appreciate fully but countless generations will? What say you?

Some might have said Len was obsessed but thousands now know that he was simple dedicated to his beloved Camellias. And I dedicate this Blog to the Living Memory off the late Leonard Ingsley Hobbs.

A few Camellias?

I mentioned in my earlier blog that I used to work for a guy who grew a few camellias. What I didn’t mention was that it was only a hobby for him in his retirement years. I did also say that he only grew a few. A few thousand that is.

Now you may ask why he grew so many and what he did with them. I will answer the latter question in another blog but for why he grew so many, I can explain.

The first reason was, because he could. His family had all grown up and were successful and taken over the family business and he had more money than he could otherwise spend so he spent some of it on Camellias. So He grew the seedlings at his home and then grew the plants onto the flowering stage at the Business’ country property where I worked alongside my brother.

The other main reason was, that he was not just into growing Camellias but he was into trying to propagate and find new types or colours in the flowers.

Many Camellias set seeds but the seeds themselves require special conditions to make them sprout, so whilst I have done it a few times, it is not an easy process. Secondly Camellias take up to seven years to flower before you have any idea what the colour or shape of the flower may be. And of the thousands literally that one might grow, although the flowers may be very pretty, the chances of getting a completely different and desirable flower/plant are few and far between. I don’t know how many thousands of Camellia seedlings my friend Len grew but I do know that He only ‘found’ one uniquely different enough to name and mass-produce and put on the commercial market. Its name was Pavlova, named after the desert Pavlova that was served one night at a Camellia Society Dinner in Honour of some visiting American Camellia lovers.

And I think by the time it was publicly released he had passed on. So you see a lot of time and effort, literally years of time and effort, went into a project that gave little to him personally financially but it did give him the chance to do what he loved and the opportunity to add something “new” hopefully to the Camellia world.

So you see a lot of work and a lot of plants, for just the sniff of finding something different. In my next blog I will tell you what Len did with his excess plants. Bur for now what about your hobby? How about you? Do you see everything you do or try, only in financial terms or are you prepared to give of yourself for years if necessary, to try and give something back to the world. Is there something that you would love to do and can afford to do that you could do? Not for your own benefit but for the wider community?

Renewing Old Leaves.

It was stinking hot today and I walked outside past a couple of Camellia Bushes in our new yard. I have yet to see them in flower so can’t tell you what colour they are yet but I noticed that some of the old leaves were rather spotty.

I used to work for a guy who grew a few camellias and so I did pick up a little about their habits and needs. For instance, although they are best suited for filtered light or shade, some plants cope with full sun quite well. As a general rule of thumb though, it is the darker colours that flourish in the sun. Therefore the lighter the colour, right down to white, the more shade the better.

Also, although they can be sprinkled with water from above, it is best not to do so on a hot day as the sun often boils the water on the leaves before it has had time to be absorbed in or to evaporate from. If you do sprinkle them on a hot day and they burn and become spotty, you have to put up with them till the new growth replaces them. The only problem there is that it takes the Camellia bush three years to completely renew all its old leaves. So you can burn and ruin the look of your Camellia plant in a matter of a few hours, but have to wait as long three years to have it re-fresh itself fully.

A lot of our mistakes are a bit like that aren’t they? Easy to make but hard to cover up. So what do we do? Well mistakes will always happen no matter how careful we are, so when they do we just have to fix them up as best we can and live with the results.

With that in mind though, it is a wise move, is it not, to make sure every time you do something, that you do it properly at the start and take no short cuts or chances on mistakes happening.

It may be an old saying of my mother’s but the old maxim of, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

So what are you doing right now that a little more care and prevention now will save you heartache and eyesores well into the Future. Just something for you to ponder on for today.