TeaHQ

Yingshuang

A Zhejiang cultivar whose name means meeting the frost, after its ability to keep producing late into the autumn when most of the surrounding plantings have stopped. It is used for both green and black tea, and it is one of the cultivars that made autumn-picked Chinese black tea a viable product rather than an afterthought.

迎霜Camellia sinensis var. sinensisYingshuangChinaAlso called Ying Shuang

Where it sits in the botany

Yingshuang 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.

Registration code: Yingshuang. A breeding or registration code identifies the selection in an institutional register and is often the name a grower uses when the trade name is not.

Also transliterated as: yingshuang, ying shuang.

Where it came from

Bred in Zhejiang and released as a national cultivar, planted for green and black tea production.

How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The release year and parentage were not verified against a primary source.

What the plant is like

Late-season productivity and a downy bud. Grown partly because it extends the working year at the end rather than the beginning, which is the less contested half of the calendar.

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.
  • 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. 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