A native of China and one of the oldest medicinal herbs, camellia sinensis is a tall evergreen shrub that blooms with white followers that resemble dogwood roses. This is the shrub that started the legend of tea in 2737 B.C. when the fresh leaves fell into the boiling water of Chinese Emperor Shen Nung, the father of Chinese medicine. Today, there are more than three thousand species of the shrub that yield hundreds - if not thousands - of varieties of the most popular teas in the world - green, oolong from leaves that are mildly fermented; and black, the most pungent of the teas, comes from fully fermented leaves. picked by TeaAvenue 2 years ago