User:Ziounclesi/tea tree

Captain Cook described a "tea plant" found in Dusky Sound, New Zealand in his 1773 journals, : "The tea-plant is a small tree or shrub, with five white petals, or flower- leaves, shaped like those of a rose, having smaller ones of the same figure in the intermediate spaces, and twenty or more filaments or threads. The tree sometimes grows to a moderate height, and is generally bare on the lower part, with a number of small branches growing close together towards the top. The leaves are small and pointed, like those of the myrtle; it bears a dry roundish seed-case, and grows commonly in dry places near the shores. The leaves, as I have already observed, were used by many of us as tea, which has a very agreeable bitter and flavour when they are recent, but loses some of both when they are dried. When the infusion was made strong, it proved emetic to some in the same manner as green tea."