Where is the origin of tea trees? What is the basis for this?
Let's see and study
In recent decades, tea science and botany research have been combined to make a more detailed and in-depth analysis and demonstration of the origin of tea plants from different perspectives such as tree species, geological changes and climate changes, further proving that Southwestern China is the origin of tea plants. The main arguments, in simple terms, have three aspects:
1. According to the natural distribution of tea trees, there are 23 genera and more than 380 species of Theaceae plants found, while there are 15 genera and more than 260 species in China, and most of them are distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. There are more than 100 species of Camellia that have been found, including more than 60 species on the the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, of which tea species occupy the most important position. From the perspective of botany, the Vavilov center of many genera is concentrated in a certain area, which means that this area is the origin center of this flora. Theaceae and Camellia are highly concentrated in Southwestern China, which shows that Southwestern China is the origin center of Camellia plants, which should be the birthplace of tea
2.From the perspective of geological changes, the southwestern region is characterized by undulating mountains, crisscrossing river valleys, and diverse terrain, resulting in the formation of numerous small geomorphic and microclimatic regions. In the case of significant differences in low latitudes and elevations, climate differences are significant, causing the tea trees that originally grew here to gradually separate into different climates in the tropical, subtropical, and temperate zones, leading to intra species variation of tea trees, Developed into tropical and subtropical types of large leaf and medium leaf tea trees, as well as temperate middle leaf and small leaf tea trees. Botanists believe that the place where a species has the most variation is the center of its origin. The three provinces in southwest China are the places with the most variation and rich resources of tea trees in China, and they are regarded as the centers of tea tree origin.
3. From the perspective of the evolutionary types of tea trees, they have always tended to evolve continuously throughout their phylogenetic history. Therefore, any area with a relatively concentrated concentration of primitive tea trees should belong to the origin of tea trees. The wild large tea trees in the three southwestern provinces of China and their adjacent areas have the morphological and biochemical characteristics of primitive tea trees, which also proves that the southwestern region of China is the center of tea tree origin
