Shi Da Cha

The Anhui population behind Taiping Houkui, named for leaves the size and shape of a persimmon leaf. It is the plant that makes the most visually extreme green tea in China possible: Taiping Houkui's flat pressed blades run to several centimetres, and no ordinary small-leaf cultivar grows a leaf long enough to be made that way.

柿大茶Camellia sinensis var. sinensisChinaAlso called persimmon-leaf tea plant

Where it sits in the botany

Shi Da Cha is recorded under Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, the variety group one level above cultivar. It is associated with China, which is where it was selected or is most widely planted rather than the only place it grows.

Also transliterated as: shi da cha, shidacha.

Where it came from

A local seed-grown population of the Taiping area of Anhui, associated with the production of Taiping Houkui and distinguished within local practice by its unusually long leaf.

How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The association between the material and the tea is consistently reported in Chinese tea writing. The population's own history, and whether current planting is seed-grown or selected, were not verified.

What the plant is like

Exceptionally long, broad, thick leaves on a sinensis-type plant — large for the variety without being assamica. The picking standard takes two leaves and a bud at a stage most green-tea producers would consider already too old.

Why a grower plants it

Yield, hardiness, when it buds, what it resists and whether a machine can cut it. This is the half of a cultivar’s identity that decides what is actually in the ground, and it is usually left out of writing aimed at drinkers.

A cultivar kept for a shape rather than for a yield, which is close to unique in this catalogue. Taiping Houkui is picked to a standard that would be a defect anywhere else — a long shoot with mature leaves, rather than a tight bud — and it is then hand-flattened, sometimes between mesh screens, into blades that have to be intact and uniform. That requires a plant whose leaves are long, thick enough not to tear under pressing, and even in shape. Yield per hectare is poor, labour per kilogram is very high, and the resulting tea is expensive for reasons that are almost entirely manual.

What it does in the cup

Mild, sweet and orchid-scented with a very light body and low astringency — much gentler than the dramatic appearance suggests. The maturity of the leaf, which would coarsen most green teas, here reads as softness rather than as bitterness.

How much of this is really the cultivar?

Taiping Houkui is bought with the eyes, and the cultivar's contribution is mostly to the object rather than to the taste. The leaf length is genuinely genetic and genuinely necessary — the tea cannot be made without it — but the flat, veined, screen-pressed blade is manufacture, and the mild orchid character owes as much to the low-temperature firing and the late picking standard as to the plant. This is the clearest case in the catalogue of a cultivar being selected for a physical specification, and it is a useful corrective to the assumption that a cultivar is always a flavour choice.

Cultivar, growing site and processing all shape a cup, and the cultivar is very often the smallest of the three. It is also the one that fits on a label, so almost every commercial incentive runs toward overstating it. This section is on every cultivar page that has been reviewed for it, including the ones where the honest answer is “less than you would think”.

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.

Green tea — Tea whose oxidation is halted early by heat, keeping the leaf green and the cup fresh, vegetal or marine in character.

Teas in the catalogue made from Shi Da Cha

Other cultivars in Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

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.

How TeaHQ handles sources