Camellia sinensis var. cambodiensis
The third name in tea botany, and the least stable one. Plants of the southern Indochinese form are intermediate between the small-leaf and large-leaf varieties — upright, fast-growing, with a leaf of middling size and a habit closer to a small tree than a shrub — and they have been classified at various times as a variety of Camellia sinensis, as a subspecies of a separate assamica species, and as nothing distinct at all. Whether it deserves a rank of its own is a genuine disagreement among botanists rather than a settled fact this record can report.
Where it sits in the botany
Camellia sinensis var. cambodiensis is recorded under Camellia sinensis var. cambodiensis, the variety group one level above cultivar. No origin country is recorded against it.
Also transliterated as: cambodiensis, cambod.
Where it came from
Recognised from populations in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and adjacent uplands, and treated in Indian planting practice as the Cambod jat, one of the seed stocks alongside Assam indigenous, Manipuri, Burma and China.
How firm this is: Accounts disagree. The disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. Published treatments disagree: the same plants are placed as a variety of Camellia sinensis, as a subspecies of a separate assamica species, and as not distinct at all. TeaHQ records the name because the tea industry uses it, and does not assert that it is a good taxonomic unit.
What the plant is like
Upright and vigorous with a leaf between the two better-known varieties in size. Its practical significance in tea is as a hybridising partner: a great deal of Indian and Sri Lankan planting material is Assam–China–Cambod mixed ancestry rather than any one of the three.
What it is usually made into
The categories this cultivar is typically processed into. It is a statement about common practice, not a limit — processing decides the category, and a cultivar can be taken down more than one route.
- Black tea — Tea taken deliberately through full enzymatic oxidation, giving the dark leaf, amber-to-red liquor and malty or brisk character most Western drinkers think of as simply 'tea'.
Other cultivars in Camellia sinensis var. cambodiensis
Guides covering this cultivar
- Sinensis, assamica, and the third name that will not settle — Tea botany has two levels, and most tea writing collapses them into one. Above the cultivar sits the botanical variety, and the difference between the small-leaf and large-leaf varieties explains more about a tea than any cultivar name does.
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No breeding register or institutional record stands behind the account above, which is why the origin note carries its confidence in the open rather than reading as a citation.