NATIVE-TEA PLANTS

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12394, 13 March 1926, Page 16

NATIVE-TEA PLANTS

• In these days New Zealand imports all her tea from. Java, Ceylon, India and China. But when Captain Cook visited Dusky Bay, his sailors made “tea” ouii of the leaves of The manuka, , a species of leptospermum <jr fea-tres. They also mixgd the leaves of manuka! and of the spruce to brew a kind of beer. The. true tea plant will grow •in Australia (just’ as coffee wifi), but' it is nowhere cultivated on a commercial. scale. - There are, however, 'some native plant’s of which the leaves have in the past been used for making tea and other drinks. Various species of the leptospermum, or tea tree abound in Australia, where theTetives have’ sometimes been used for making tea. It is from-this use that the plant, takes its name. The spelling, “ti-tree,” sometimes used,' heJongs to a quite different plant found in the South Sea Islands. Another “tea-plant” is the Correa alba, a shrub with jffetty creamcoloured flower?, which grows on sand- ■ hills, and is sometimes called Cape Barren tea in Tasmania, because it was used for making tea by the sealeys of Cape Barren Island and other islands in Bass Straits.. . . •The leaves of the sassafras', a' small tree often growing to a height of 50

feet qr more, which grows in wellwatered gullies in Tasmania and south-eastern Australia, can b'e used for making an excellent drink called sassafras beer. The sassafras grows only jn thick bush, and When the other trees are cleared away and the place left open to the sun, and wind the sassafras trees tend to droop and die, even if they have not been tpurhed. The leaves of the sassafras have a rather bitter but not- unpleasant taste when chewed,, and one or two df them thrown into a billy of tea give it quite a pleasant taste, agreeable- enough, anyway, to-those who like a slice ’ of lemon in ,their tea. . It is. however,- the bark that is used in making -the beer. It is ground up fine. The.beer made from it is light yellow in colour and very refreshing in hot weather. It is also to have tonic effects, while chewing a'hit of sassafras hark is sometimes supposed to be good for neuralgia.