You may never have tried kuding tea, but you have surely seen its fruit

For Chinese people who have grown up drinking tea since childhood, it is quite common for the tea they drink not to come from the Camelliaceae family. Honeysuckle, goji berry, red date, cassia seed, gynostemma, luo han guo, pomelo peel and so on come fromteas brewed from different organs of various plants. Everyone should have tried them, right? The plant introduced today is closely related to thekuding tea that is so beloved by Chinese people.

The large leaves of the big-leaved holly look rather rugged, yet surprisingly they can also be brewed into tea for people to drink. Image: UFEI / Cal Poly

If you have read this previous article from Species Calendar, you may recall that it is a raw material for kuding tea - althoughthe plants used to make kuding tea are far more than just the big-leaved holly。

Kuding tea. Licensed image source: Tuchong Creative

Small pale flowers, but winning by sheer numbers

The genus Ilex, to which the big-leaved holly (Ilex latifolia) belongs, is in the family Aquifoliaceae, a single-genus family, meaning that within the familythere is only this one genus, Ilex. Ilex is a large family, with about 400 to 500 species worldwide, widely distributed from the tropics to the temperate zones of both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, with the greatest number of species in Central and South America and tropical Asia. In China, there are about 200 or more species of Ilex, mainly distributed in the southern provinces and regions where winters are relatively warm and humid. Apart from a few species that lose their leaves in winter, most species are evergreen trees or shrubs.

The big-leaved holly can grow into a large tree. Image: KENPEI / wiki commons

The big-leaved holly is afour-season evergreenlarge tree, with a straight trunkand leaves that are oblong, dark green and glossy, hard in texturewith clearly serrated leaf margins. In spring, clusters ofsmall yellow-green flowersbloom from the leaf axils of the small branches. The flowers are tetramerous (both petals and stamens number 4), but often, due to functional abortion of the female or male organs, they change from normal bisexual flowers to unisexual flowers (that is, in male flowers the stamens are normal but the pistil ovary shrinks and is sterile and cannot set fruit; female flowers are just the opposite, with the ovary developing normally but the stamens degenerating and losing the function of dispersing pollen).

The yellow-green flowers of the big-leaved holly. Image: Daderot / wiki commons

To avoid self-pollination as much as possible, the big-leaved holly'sfemale and male flowers often grow on different branches. When in bloom they have little ornamental value, butthey win by sheer numbers, and at full bloom they have a faint fragrance, often attracting many bees to come and collect pollen.

The stunning fruit is what is truly worth admiring

The best season to admire the big-leaved holly isautumn and winter, after the fruit has all turned bright red. Especially after a heavy snowfall,red berries dot the whole tree beneath the white snow, gorgeous and moving. The big-leaved holly has a long fruit-viewing period, from mid-to-late September all the way to January of the following year; it is also robust by nature, tolerant of transplanting, with strong sprouting ability, and rarely harmed by scale insects; combined with its tolerance of drought and poor soil, and of subzero low temperatures, all things considered it is anextremely excellent native ornamental fruit plant, very suitable for promotion and application in areas north of the Yangtze River.

The fruit of the big-leaved holly. Image: Bayard Cutting Arboretum

Besides the big-leaved holly, many species in the genus Ilex can be used for ornament, most of them having evergreen leathery leaves and bright red fruit in autumn and winter. Those commonly used in gardens at present includehorned holly(I. cornuta) and its cultivarthornless horned holly（I. cornuta"Fortunei"）、horned holly（I. aquifolium）、Chinese holly（I. chinensis）、I. rotunda(I. rotunda) and others. These plants have deep green leaves all year round, and their flowers are small and yellow-green, so even when they bloom they attract no attention, basically belonging to the unnoticedbackground plants, but once the fruit ripens, the bright red fruit often gives people a striking feeling.

The fruit of the horned holly (I. cornuta) likewise remains on the plant through winter, bright red and very lovely. asianflora.com

The leaf tea of the East

Today, the raw plant materials used for kuding tea in various parts of China differ greatly. They fall mainly into two categories: one is thebig-leaved kuding teabased mainly on plants of the genus Ilex in the family Aquifoliaceae, such as the big-leaved holly used in East China, and thekudingcha holly(I. kudingcha, note: this species has been merged into I. kaushue) and horned holly used in Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan; the other is thesmall-leaved kuding teabased mainly on the genus Ligustrum and related genera in the family Oleaceae, found mainly in the Southwest, such asHenry's privet(Ligustrum henryi) and others.

Henry's privet of the Oleaceae family, from flower to leaf, looks very different from the plants of the Aquifoliaceae family. Image: helicongus / flickr

Small-leaved kuding tea made from plants of the genus Ligustrum. Licensed image source: Tuchong Creative

As a medicinal plant tea widely drunk among the people, kuding tea has a history of 2,000 years of consumption in China. In ancient texts it was mostly called "gao lu", "gua lu", "ku deng", and was regarded as an excellent product serving both as medicine and as drink.

According to the Eastern Han work Tongjun Lu: "In the south there is the gua lu tree, which also resembles tea, extremely bitter and astringent; take fire and shave it, drink it as tea, and it can also keep you awake all night. And Jiao and Guangvalue it most ⟧67⟧." In addition, Chen Zangqi of the Tang Dynasty also recorded in Bencao Shiyi: "Gao lu leaves... come from the mountains of the South Sea, the leaves resemble tea but are larger, southerners pick them to use as tea,." In addition, Chen Zangqi of the Tang Dynasty also recorded in his book *Bencao Shiyi* (Supplement to the Materia Medica): "Gaolu leaves... come from the mountains of the southern seas; the leaves resemble tea leaves but are larger, and the southern people pick them to use as a tea substitute,and value them extremely highly." So, what plant today is the "gao lu" that the ancients valued so much?

Kuding tea and tea leaves. Image: Shizuha / wiki commons

Unfortunately, the ancients' descriptions of plants were not as meticulous as today's floras, and what has been passed down are onlyfragmentary accounts. The Tang Dynasty Cha Jing and Haiyao Bencao describe it much the same as above; the Qing Dynasty Gaoyao County Annals adds a little: "Ku deng, the tree is several zhang tall, the leaves resemble loquat, very bitter." From these ancient descriptions we can infer that the ancient kuding tea tree was alarge-leaved tree native to the Guangdong and Guangxi area, with leaves resembling the loquat tree, whose taste as a tea drink was very bitter and astringent。

Kuding tea: which kind is more authentic to drink?

So, according to the descriptions in the ancient texts,big-leaved kuding tea is clearly the true kuding tea, and its source plants are mainly the big-leaved holly and the kudingcha holly. But these two hollies are very similar in form, differing only in microscopic morphological differences such as whether the young branches have fine hairs, the number of small flowers per single branch of the male inflorescence, the size of the fruit, and the wrinkles of the fruit stone. Most people basically cannot easily distinguish the two without looking carefully. Moreover,making kuding tea mainly uses the tender buds before the flowering period and the newly unfolded young leaves, so trying to determine the species from the form of the tea leaves is simply a fantasy.

The kudingcha holly, whose current official Chinese name should be I. kaushue. Image: foodland.at

Besides the micro-morphological differences, the two also show clear regional differences in their places of origin. The big-leaved holly is mainly native to Hubei, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian and other provinces south of the Yangtze River in China, while the kudingcha holly is mainly distributed in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, and southern Yunnan and Sichuan. Therefore,the East China regiongenerally considers the kuding tea made from the big-leaved holly to be the most authentic, whilethe South China regionconsiders the kudingcha holly to be the most authentic- basically following the traditional custom of using local materials.

According to us, how would you describe the leaves of the big-leaved holly? Image: Lisa Miner / Plantilus

At present, no reliable paper analyzing the differences in chemical composition between the two has been seen, but according to the general rule that "plants of the same family and genus also have similar chemical composition," one caninfer that the two differ at most only slightly in taste and flavor。

. Therefore, most people will not fuss over exactly which holly the big-leaved kuding tea they drink comes from; it is enough just to know it is kuding tea. As for which one's kuding tea is more authentic, this is nothing more than a dispute among commercial brands; as long as youdrink it happily, that is enough。

This article is the 166th article of the 4th year of Species Calendar, from Species Calendar author @Chenshan Bangkanjun.