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Continued from this morning...

Two of the most popular types of teas are green tea and black tea. Both come from the same leaf. The difference is that the green tea is kept green by steaming it immediately after plucking. To make black tea, a leaf is rolled enough to make it limp, so that the polyphenols within mix with an enzyme PPO (PolyPhenolOxidase), also released inside the leaf, and the green tea turns into black tea.

Why plants have these reactive substances within them, and why they keep them safely apart (until we rupture them) is still under study. One elegantly simple theory, property of Dr. Peter J. Davies, of Cornell University, suggests that when these two reactive substances coagulate, making tea in the bug belly! - the bug finds the tiny tea mix repellant, and it stops eating the leaf. Experts have unilaterally, in any case ruled out the old theory that polyphenols and its enzyme's natural role in the tea leaf was to give the Brits a brisk cuppa.

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Read a short story by Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire mysteries:

Another Man's Moccasins	Kindness Goes Unpunished	Death without Company	The Cold Dish

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The great author, Michael Pollan, wrote a book called the "The Botany of Desire" that discusses man's relationship with several plants. He asked that we look at the world from the plants' view.

When analyzing and considering tea, we should remember that tea was not originally designed for our pleasure. Like all plants, tea evolved according to its own propagation peccadillos and survival needs. When we talk about tea and components of the leaf, we tend to focus on what they do for humans. Caffeine keeps us awake. Certain polyphenols help keep us healthy. The warm beverage cheers our souls and nourishes. But from the plant's point of view, from nature's standpoint, why are these components present inside the green leaf of a perennial plant? How did this humble plant become the most popular beverage on the planet? Tea, like most plants, just wants to grow. Its growth is fueled by glucose, which it magically creates out of sunlight and carbon in the air. Also tea can not run from its predators, it remains firmly planted in the ground. So to survive thousands of years, tea plants have developed many different defenses against those pests that would eat the leaves until the plant dies and threaten the entire species.