WI/AHC: Not for all the tea in America...

Inspired by a stray thought about the role tea played in the ARW, I was looking up some history of tea cultivation in North America:
Curiously, around this time, a New York Times article dated 26 October, 1863 reported on the discovery of tea plants growing natively in Western Maryland and Pennsylvania. According to a Boston Bulletin report reprinted in the Times:

The American Tea Company, an association chartered by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, have [sic] employed Dr. Spencer Bonsall, a man of experience and character, to examine the American tea plant... He declares that the tea plant exists in Pennsylvania and Western Maryland beyond all doubt. "It grows indigenously," he states, "in the greatest luxuriance and abundance in the places that I have visited, limited, however, to those localities which afford the peculiar soil indispensable to it, as is the case in China, Assam, and Japan. "...The leaf is almost identical with some of the varieties from which the best tea is made in Assam; and Dr. Bonsall expresses his belief that tea equal to any that is brought from China could be made from this plant.

So, what if European explorers and/or colonists discover tea plants growing natively in North America in the 17th C., either adopted to growing conditions there or growing in the few areas suitable? What happens to the tea trade and how does it affect things in general?

Edit: AHC points if you have it cultivated by the Amerinds and extra points for TTL having an event known as the Boston Tea Party.
 
It would seem he's wrong.

Everything I can find (on the net) suggests/states that the Genus Camellia is restricted to east Asia.

Unless someone tried planting tea, the plantation didn't work and the guy found feral plants.

In which case, there would be no change to history.


OTOH, if actual tea plantations happened in the US in the 1850s (not going be much earlier than that - even the Brits didn't get tea in India going effectively much before that), that might be interesting, But not very, because the US isn't drinking much tea by that point.
 
It would seem he's wrong.

Everything I can find (on the net) suggests/states that the Genus Camellia is restricted to east Asia.

Unless someone tried planting tea, the plantation didn't work and the guy found feral plants.

In which case, there would be no change to history.


OTOH, if actual tea plantations happened in the US in the 1850s (not going be much earlier than that - even the Brits didn't get tea in India going effectively much before that), that might be interesting, But not very, because the US isn't drinking much tea by that point.

Sorry, I managed to leave out the link!

http://www.teamuse.com/article_011201.html

My understanding is that it was feral plants from earlier experiments, but the WI is for either native tea or establishment before European colonization.
 
Sorry, I managed to leave out the link!

http://www.teamuse.com/article_011201.html

My understanding is that it was feral plants from earlier experiments, but the WI is for either native tea or establishment before European colonization.
Right, but the point is that Camellia is native to east Asia. Having it suddenly show up pre-colonization is ASB, I'm afraid.

Could there be another infusion? Well, Sassafras didn't take off too well. Would the cachet of Asian tea mean people still drank it? Would we need to have something caffeinated to make it addicting?

I don't think simply trying to handwave real tea is going to work.
 
Could there be another infusion? Well, Sassafras didn't take off too well. Would the cachet of Asian tea mean people still drank it? Would we need to have something caffeinated to make it addicting?

I disagree that Sassafras didn't take off too well, considering that it's flavor was so popular that manufacturers went to great lengths to imitate it when saffrole was banned by the FDA in the 50's. It may not have ever been as popular as tea or coffee, or even chocolate, though.

However, I do think you're right about the need for caffeine -- or some other stimulant drug -- to get it to work.

To that end, I propose Yaupon Holly. If Wiki is right, all you need to do is get rid of the European assumption that it causes vomiting, and have the Native Americans teach Europeans about the "Black Drink". Okay, so that may all be a rather tough order.
 
Maybe not so hard: http://www.eattheweeds.com/yaupon-holly-ilex-vomitoria/

Spanish colonists in early Florida drank Yaupon tea. One priest in 1615 wrote: “There is no Spaniard or Indian who does not drink it every day in the morning or evening.” They called it “Indian Tea” or Cacina (the latter a name that confounded botanists for a few centuries.)

In the 1700s English settlers in the Carolinas drank the “Indian tea” daily. It was very popular in the second half of the 1800s but fell out of favor. Scholars don’t know why but one would think the proliferation of coffee might of had something to do with it.
 
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Well, trade with China is less profitable now. Silks and porcelain only comprised a minority of the total contents in the cargo hold of a typical ship participating in the old China trade. Depending on how much yield the tea harvests in North America amount to, there might be less involvement in the China trade, which has all sorts of political and diplomatic ramifications later on down the line.
 
Right, but the point is that Camellia is native to east Asia. Having it suddenly show up pre-colonization is ASB, I'm afraid.
It's not actually all that ASB. Many genera that exist in East Asia also have species or closely related genera in the Americas. The sassafras you mentioned is a good example: there is one species in China and a very similar species in the US. While Camellia itself doesn't have any American species, related genera like Gordonia and Stewartia have very similar looking representatives in both continents. It wouldn't be all that unlikely for a Camellia species resembling C. sinensis to make it to the Americas.
 
http://www.naturalnews.com/033646_yaupon_holly_antioxidants.html
Yaupon leaves contain between .65% and .85% caffeine by weight, compared to coffee beans 1.1% caffeine and tea leaves 3.5% caffeine.
I wonder if selective breeding could increase that.

http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=ILVO
Native from southern Virginia south to Florida and west to southeast Oklahoma and central Texas,
A wide range and more tolerate of different conditions that tea plants.

Yaupon Holly really looks like the best choice.
 
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