History of tea nomenclature

Tea first arrived in Europe in 1610, after chocolate in 1528, but before coffee in 1615.

In 1690, E. Kaempfer, a German medical doctor cum botanist who came to Japan from Holland and observed the habit of tea drinking among the people, named the bush ‘thea’.

Nomenclaturist Carl Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum (1753). He took the original Amoy pronunciation (Tay), and applying the country of discovery to his two part naming system (genera and species, he came up with Thea sinensis.

Subsequently, he names the two varieties Thea viridis and Thea bohea.

In 1818, Robert Sweet, an English botanist, united Theus and Camellia into one genus and called it Camellia, as it is still called today.

The name Camellia came from a Moravian Jesuit named George Josheph Kamel (1661-1706), who studied Asian plants. In 1688, George Josheph Kamel went to Luzon, in the Philippines, where he studied botany, even though he was sent as a priest. He had his paper published in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

The species name, sinensis, means ‘from China’. Interestingly enough, over 2000 varieties of tea are derived from this one plant species.

It wasn’t until 1959 that the International Code of Nomenclature named the tea plant Camellia sinensis.
History of tea nomenclature

Nomenclature of Tea

Nomenclature of Tea
By the time the nomenclaturist Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum (1753), tea had already grown and consumed for centuries and he was aware of the availability of green and black teas.

Accordingly, he identifies two separate species of plants that yield tea: Thea virids (green) and Thea bohen (black).

Those inaccurate classification held until the early 19th century, when it was determined that these two plants were, in fact, one and the same.

The species of the tea plant is Camellia sinensis.

It is in the the family Theaceae of order Theales.

Interestingly enough, over 2000 varieties of tea are derived from this one plant species.

The differences are one function of the way o which the tea leaves are processed.