PlantFiles: Tea Plant
Camellia sinensis 'Rosea'

So far so good. I received my plant in beautiful condition from the grower in January 2008. It arrived after flowering and it had a few tiny pea sized fruits on it. As soon as it warmed up, the 3 gallon pot went outside on the deck. It received full sun (East) for most of the day, water just about every day, and it has tripled in size with no additional attention other than sporadic fertilizing (shame on me). It is now covered with so many flower buds, I can't count them. I'm really looking forward to bloom. The tea fruits matured to tiny apple looking fruits and I may try germinating the seeds, but understand that most trees come from cuttings.

I purchased 10 seeds from the internet, sorry I forgot where.
Three months after planting each in a coffee can with commercial potting soil, I gave up, been watering and checking every day but no sign of seedlings. As I dumped out one coffee can to reuse the potting soil, I spotted a lump in the soil. Carefully checking, it was a seedling that had just sprouted ! Very excitedly I carefully checked the rest of the cans and found one more seedling.
That was all I got from my 10 seeds, but a year later...the plants are each 1 1/2 feet tall, one even blossomed once already. I feed them Peters 20/20/20 once a week in the warm months and less when cold weather comes. I do not leave them out in weather less than 40 degrees. Most of their lives have been spent in my homemade greenhouse, a 2x4 little house covered in plastic, opened in the warm months, and closed and slightly heated in cold weather.
Location is north west Florida, 20 miles from Alabama line.
Beginners luck..... :)

Back in 1887 there was an unsucessful effort to grow tea (Camelia sinensis) on the Big Island as a commercial crop. In the past few years, one grower has been experimenting with tea growing in his farm about 3-4 miles from where I live. He now has about 8 to 10 acres planted and has been producing excellent quality tea on a very small scale.

This field is up on about an 800 foot elevation.

The Dept of Tropical Agriculture with the University of Hawaii in Hilo has been working closely with the farmer.

As far as we know, it is the only tea growing effort in the United States, except for near Charleston, SC where tea has been growing off and on for about 400 years.

At this time, Hawaii is the only State growing vanilla, cacao, coffee and tea (except for SC on tea) and the Big Island is the only one growing all four.

This plant is distinguished from the typical Camellia sinensis due to its flowers. They are pale pink, instead of the usual white. It also smells good. The leaves can be used to make tea - but if you do, you probably won't get flowers.