TeaForum.org

Vendors who sell Camellia Sinensis seedlings or seeds for planting.
Share your recommendations and experiences, good or bad.


I'll start by sharing my experience so far: Finding a store that sells some generic Camelia Sinesis seeds is easy. Finding a store that sells different varietals is exponentially harder. I'll keep on looking..

If you live in the US, this seems like an excellent store: https://camforest.com/

interesting

Iizuki wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:33 am

Finding a store that sells different varietals is exponentially harder. I'll keep on looking..

i think the reason you're not seeing those is most cultivars are not stable (heirlooms). they're clonally propagated.

the reason for this is tea plants are slow growing compared to a tomato or something, so stabilization of desired phenos would take forever.

due to environmental protection regulations, you can't get such cuttings in many countries due to the time and expense involved in properly doing so.
this usually involves importation and subsequent propagation and study in isolation under careful supervision by licensed authorities to prevent the spread of foreign pests and pathogens. it takes a lot to certify live tissue as safe for domestic cultivation.

so for example in the US, afaik, almost all tea plants we grow here were started domestically from seed (or clones from plants germinated domestically) since seed is much easier to legally import. there are some efforts underway to develop new cultivars optimized for domestic production.

that's why you're not seeing blockbuster cultivars like yabukita, qingxin, ruby 18, TGY, etc for sale on https://camforest.com/collections/tea-camellias

I don't know from other tea trees but last time I've tried to send seeds to a client , it didn't work well.
I've got seeds from Bulang mountain in one village from their Cha Wang ( they actually let me go over the fence and pick up the fruits from the tree ) . The seed is inside of the hard hard shell and that is also covered with sort of fruit skin which I had to peel off to prevent getting rotted stuff to parcel. It took over month to deliver ( before Covid ) and when client got it , the seeds were rotted inside the hard shell.

Yeah you're probably right @pedant. It seems quite unlikely that a store, that ships a wide selection of varietals, will be found. Still, I don't think that it's unreasonable to stumble updon a store that just happens sell one type of seeds from a nearby farm, and they actually disclose the origin. Another possibility would be that something pops up from the chinese side of the internet.

I asked Camforest for EU shipping and they said that it's possible to send seeds, but it requires a phytosanitary inspection which costs $65. Meanwhile I grabbed their (e)book about growing tea in western countries.


That's really unfortunate @aet . A nice idea tho. It shows that you don't necessarily need an actual store. Being acquainted with someone who lives close to actual tea plants can very well be enough.
If you're such person, please come forward!

I haven't really gone out of my way to look very much, but this is the only place in Europe I've seen selling specific plants/seeds- https://shop.liu-tea-art.com/produkt-ka ... tee-samen/

Nice find @wave_code!

You may try to contact Petr Sic https://www.sicaj.cz/ He "runs" a small teagarden in Georgia, and works with local farmers/producers, so maybe he can get you some Georgian tea seeds if he's there during the right season. He offered some in the past https://www.facebook.com/groups/3229740 ... 200719217/

You might have luck asking for help at the various tea research institutes. The ones in former British colonies do most of their research in English, so they will likely be able to suggest sources for seeds.

A few examples:

Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka: https://www.tri.lk/
Tea Research Association Tocklai (Assam, India): https://www.tocklai.org/
UPASI Tea Research Foundation (Nilgiri, India): http://www.upasitearesearch.org/
Tea Research Institue of Tanzania: http://trit.or.tz/
Tea Research Foundation of Central Africa (Malawi): https://www.trfca.net/

mbanu wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 19, 2021 10:58 am

You might have luck asking for help at the various tea research institutes.

Good idea! Hadn't thought of that.

Iizuki wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:36 am

If you live in the US, this seems like an excellent store: https://camforest.com/

Ended up getting seeds from here. Importing to EU was somewhat expensive because of the mandatory inspection, but otherwise I can vouch for this store. The seeds germinated without problems and are now growing happily. I'll find out later whether there are actual differences between the different varieties I got

Iizuki wrote: ↑

Tue May 18, 2021 10:41 am

Iizuki wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:36 am

If you live in the US, this seems like an excellent store: https://camforest.com/

Ended up getting seeds from here. Importing to EU was somewhat expensive because of the mandatory inspection, but otherwise I can vouch for this store. The seeds germinated without problems and are now growing happily. I'll find out later whether there are actual differences between the different varieties I got

Would love to see images of your plant growing.
Of interest, I just saw that @John_B posted about an American tea farm in Mississippi Meetup with Jason and Timmy of the Great Mississippi Tea Company

Thanks to mention it. I was just considering adding something about another post but the self-promotion theme can get old fast, even if it also covers novel discussion.

That post about Jason and Mississippi tea doesn't get too far into the history of what they are doing, or details, beyond running through demand issues and some product descriptions.

Back on the plants and seeds subject, this discussion didn't ever seem to cover what country they were interested in buying tea plants in. I've written about tea production in Spain but otherwise have no connection to anything going on in that region. Small gardens or limited production seems to be coming up across lots of Europe, even in places it would seem way too cold for that to be practical.

Here are a couple pictures @Victoria. There are three different parent varietals: China (top tray), Assamica (middle tray) and Black sea (bottom tray). Some are misplaced though. I would have thought that the Assamicas would be the odd ones, but it turns out that it's actually the black sea variety that's easy to tell apart based on their pointed leaves. It will be interesting to see how the situation evolves as they grow. Black seas were also fastest to germinate, so there probably is a point in favoring these in cold climates, such as mine.