Types of Tea Trees

According to the size of their stems,  tea trees are classified into three types: arbors, semi-arbors and bushes. By the size of the leaf, there are three types of tea trees: large-leaf species, middle-leaf species and small-leaf species. According to the degree of evolution, there are three types: primitive type, semi-primitive type and evolution type.

Arbor-type Tea Trees

Arbor-type tea trees are tall and big with distinct trunks. The wild large tea trees that grow in the virgin forests of Yunnan and other places are all arbor-type tea trees.

These tea trees have thick trunks and high branches. If they are allowed to grow naturally, the tree height can reach several meters or even more than 10 meters.

During the tea picking season, local girls in Yunan province often use ladders to climb to the trees to pick tea leaves. In ancient times, it is said that monkeys picking tea may be an ecological phenomenon that appeared in the arbor-shaped wild tea forest.

Bush Tea Trees

In the process of northward propagation and evolution of arbor-type tea trees, due to the influence of low temperature and relatively dryness in Northern China, the tree type gradually became shorter and gradually evolved into shrub-type tea trees.

Most of the tea trees widely distributed in the tea areas of the Yangtze River valley in China are shrub-type tea trees. These tea trees are short in shape, have no obvious main trunk, and have lower branches and many branches. Especially in the case of pruning and picking, it is easy to form a steamed bun-shaped crown. Many branches, dense buds, and resistance to picking are the characteristics of shrub-type tea trees.

The tea trees cultivated in the hilly areas of the Jiangnan tea area, due to different cultivation methods, pruning and picking methods, have formed clusters, strips or carpets of tea gardens without branches.

Short Arbor Tea Trees

Half-arbor type tea tree, also known as small-tree type tea tree, is an intermediate type tea tree between the tree type and the shrub type.

The tree type is generally not as tall as the arbor type, but it has an obvious main trunk and lower branches.

This kind of tea trees are often seen in the tea areas of Guangdong and Fujian. Arbor-type and half-arbor-type tea trees, under the condition of man-made pruning to control the growth of the trunk, can also dwarf the tree shape, increase branches, and form a tree shape suitable for people's picking height.

Tea Trees Classified by Leaf Shapes

They are divided into large-leaf species, middle-leaf species and small-leaf species

The shape and size of tea leaves are closely related to the size of the tree. Arbor-type tea trees tend to have larger leaves, and shrub-type tea trees tend to have smaller leaves.

The large-leaf tea trees distributed in Yunnan and Hainan are suitable for making black tea because of their high content of tea polyphenols; the small-leaf tea trees distributed in the tea areas of the Yangtze River Basin have relatively high amino acid content and are suitable for making green tea.

The middle-leaf tea trees distributed in Taiwan, Guangdong, and Fujian are generally suitable for making oolong tea.

Tea leaf shape size

The genetic characteristics of large-leaf tea trees are generally primitive, and the small-leaf tea trees are generally evolutionary.