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’.
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).
In 1818, Robert Sweet, an English botanist, united Theus and Camellia into one genus and called it Camellia, as it is still called today. 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. The differences are one function of the way which the tea leaves are processed.
Nomenclature of Tea
