The Most Commonly Consumed Global Beverage Includes Flowering Tea

Posted by admin in Flower on September 15, 2011

All manner of teas, including the specialty flowering tea (also known as blooming tea), add up to being the most commonly drunk beverage across the world. Indeed in some countries, like Asian countries, it is a strong and inherent part of the culture, ensuring the experience of tea will always be varied and interesting no matter where you are in the world.

In China and Japan many different types of tea are drunk and each kind is often prepared delicately to almost ritualistic perfection.

India is known for its stronger teas that have for so long found themselves on supermarket shelves in the Western world.

Britain is a nation of tea drinkers. Just about any Brit you meet will certainly know how a cup of tea should be made and will encourage a strong tea that is full of flavor.

Some though, would prefer the much more gentle taste of flowering tea or flowers tea.

With this in mind, there may not always be one correct way to make a cup of tea although each different tea has a set of guidelines to help you keep on the right track.

When it comes to the dark teas of India, that the British tend to favour, the emphasis is on making a strong brew. When making a pot of black tea, it is important to use water that is as hot as possible to allow as much flavour as possible is extracted from the leaves. It should be brewed for two minutes in a teapot and should result in a pleasing dark brown colour when poured. Ideally the leaves should be removed after the first brewing to preserve the lovely taste.

Because of the strong bitter taste (often a result of over brewing) of black tea, many drinkers choose to add milk or sugar, although some will say that nothing at all should be added to black tea. Black tea is known for its invigorating properties and its refreshing nature, whether it is a cold winter’s night or a hot summer’s day. Read the rest of this entry »

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Flowering Cherries

Posted by admin in Flower on September 15, 2011

While the briefness of their glory has to be acknowledged, cherries really are the hardy spring-flowering trees for temperate climate gardens. I can think of no others, apart from their close Prunus relatives and some of the magnolias that even come close to rivalling flowering cherries for sheer weight of bloom and vibrance of colour.

The genus Prunus, to which the cherries, plums, almonds, apricots and peaches belong, includes around 430 species spread over much of the northern temperate regions and has a toehold in South America. Although including a few evergreen species, such as the well-known cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), the genus is mainly deciduous and generally hardy to the frosts likely to occur in most New Zealand gardens.

The genus Prunus is widely recognised as being divided into 5 or 6 subgenera, though some botanists prefer to recognise these as distinct genera. The subgenus cerasus is the one to which the cherries belong. This group includes a wide variety of species, many of which are not highly ornamental. The species which are of most interest to gardeners are the Chinese and Japanese cherries, not only because they tend to be the most attractive, but also because they tend to be reasonably compact, often have attractive autumn foliage as well as spring flowers and because centuries of development in oriental gardens have produced countless beautiful cultivars.

The Japanese recognise two main groups of flowering cherries: the mountain cherries or yamazakura and the temple or garden cherries, the satozakura. The mountain cherries, which tend to have simple flowers, are largely derived from the original Mountain Cherry (Prunus serrulata var. spontanea), Prunus subhirtella and Prunus incisa. They are mainly cultivated for their early-blooming habit, which is just as well because their rather delicate display would be overwhelmed by the flamboyance of the garden cherries.

The garden cherries are the result of much hybridisation, mostly unrecorded, so we can’t be exactly sure of their origins. Prunus serrulata (in its lowland form) and Prunus subhirtella also feature largely in their background. The other major influences are Prunus sargentii, Prunus speciosa, Prunus apetala and possibly the widespread Bird Cherries (Prunus avium and Prunus padus). The result of these old hybrids and modern developments is the wealth of forms that burst into bloom in our gardens every spring.

Regretfully, that complex parentage and those centuries of development and countless cultivars combined with Western misunderstandings of Japanese names and multiple introductions of the same plants under different names has led to considerable confusion with the names of flowering cherries.

Most of the popular garden plants are lumped together under three general headings:

1. Prunus subhirtella cultivars and hybrids;

2. Sato-zakura hybrids;

3. Hybrids no longer listed under parent species, being instead regarded as just to difficult to classify in that way.

But however you view them, flowering cherries have so much to offer that a little confusion over naming and identification shouldn’t stand in the way of your including them in your garden. And now that many of them are available as container-grown plants that can be bought in flower, it’s really just a matter of choosing the flowers you like. Read the rest of this entry »

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