Yellow Tea. Just in case you care, the full botanical name of this selection as named by Dr. Masato Yakoi of Japan is Camellia sinensis var. sinensis f. macrophylla 'Yellow Tea.' This is a cultivar of the large-leaf form of tea. My acquisition of this Tea has a real story behind it. Upon my first visit to Japan in 2000, we visited the nursery of Mr. Akari Shibamichi and his brother. We consider him to be a Japanese national treasure because of his knowledge of plants. His nephew is the one who found Sky Pencil Holly in the wild in Japan, and he has the original cuttings growing at his nursery (of which you may see pictures on this site). I saw this incredible cultivar of Tea at the edge of the nursery fields with its extremely large leaves and huge yellow splotches. I asked permission to acquire a few cuttings and he gladly obliged. Some years later a friend, Fred Hooks, accompanied us to Japan for his first visit. When we arrived at Mr. Shibamichi's nursery, I told Fred not to go into the office until I could show him this plant. We went to where I knew it was growing and behold, no plant. Upon looking around, I found a stump where it had been planted. Mr. Shibamichi had cut it down and thrown it away. Someone had told me sometime before that if you see a plant in Japan, you had better buy it then, because you may never see it again. Sure enough, this is the only place that I had ever seen this cultivar, but thankfully, my cuttings rooted and we are able to offer it for sale for the first time in the U.S. as far as I know. You may see it on other sites, but they acquired it from us. One can see from the pictures the impressive statement that this plant can make in the landscape. When customers see it in the field, they are immediately drawn to it over anything else around. One thing that we noticed about the variegation is that if the plant becomes too shaded, then the variegation is usually lost, but by moving it to a more sunny location, the variegation re-appears.
Zone 7-9
