or **THEA**, in botany, a genus of the polyandria monogynia clas of plants. The corolla consists of nine petals, and the calyx of five leaves; and the berry is trilococous. There are two species, both natives of China.

This shrub grows to five or six feet high, and is very ramose: the leaves are about an inch long, near half an inch broad, serrated, and terminating in a point. The traders in tea distinguish a vast many kinds of it, as they differ in colour, flavour, and the size of the leaf. To enumerate the several subdivisions were endless; the general division is into three kinds, the ordinary green tea, the finer green, and the bohea; to one or other of which all the other kinds may be referred. The common green tea has somewhat small and crumpled leaves, much convoluted, and closely folded together in the drying. Its colour is a dully green, its taste sub-astringent, and its smell agreeable. It gives the water a strong yellowish green colour. The fine green has larger leaves, less rumpled and convoluted in the drying, and more lax in their folds; it is of a paler colour, approaching to the blue-green, of an extremely pleasant smell, and has a more astringent, yet more agreeable taste than the former. It gives a pale-green colour to water. To this kind are to be referred all the higher priced green teas, the hyson, imperial, &c. The bohea consists of much smaller leaves than either of the other, and those more crumpled and closely folded than in either. It is of a darker colour than the other, often blackish; and is of the smell and taste of the others, but with a mixed sweetness and astringency. The green teas have all somewhat of the violet-flavour; the bohea has naturally somewhat of the rose smell. The leaves when gathered are dried with great caution, partly by the help of heat, partly by the air, and when thoroughly prepared will keep a long time fresh and good. Every parcel, when dried, though gathered promiscuously, is separated, according to the largeness and smallness of the leaves, into three or four different kinds, each of which is of a different price, and has its different name. The bohea tea is gathered before the leaves are perfectly opened, and is made to undergo a greater degree of heat in the curing, to which its colour and peculiar flavour is in a great measure owing.

Tea, moderately and properly taken, acts as a gentle astringent and corroborative.