Camellia L.
The genus Camellia comprises ca 120 species growing in Asia, 97 of them in China, whereby 76 endemic to it. Due to the high degree of variation, the actual taxonomy describes a large number of varieties which in future may be narrowed by molecular tools. Thus, don't be overwhelmed by the varietal biodiversity of this Camellia site!
The genus Camellia L. belongs to the tea family, Theaceae, which – together with about 20 other families – define the order Ericales. Theaceae itself may be divided into the two subfamilies Theoideae and Ternstroemioideae. Along with about five additional genera Camellia represents Theoideae. Not enough, Camellia itself can be split further into sections. In the following we adhere to recent molecular taxonomic studies (Vijayan et al. 2009). As far as known, the occurrence of PuA appears to be confined to the clade or section Thea (L.) Dyer. The following species have been described to contain caffeine and/or related compounds: C. assamica (Masters) Hung T. Chang; C. irrawadiensis Barua; C. ptilophylla Hung T. Chang; C. sinensis (L.) Kuntze and C. taliensis (W.W.Sm) Melch.
Due to their systematic position within section Thea, further 'PuA candidates' could be:
C. formosensis (Masam. & Suzuki) M.H. Su, C.F. Hsieh & C.H. Tsou; C. atrothea Hung T. Chang & H.S. Wang (syn. with var. crassicolumna of C. crassicolumna Hung T. Chang); C. leptophylla S. Ye Liang ex Hung T. Chang; C. waldeniae S.Y. Hu; C. angustifolia Hung T. Chang (syn. with Camellia sinensis var. pubilimba Hung T. Chang, C. jinyunshanica Hung T. Chang & J.H. Xiong, C. "longtousanica", C. kwangsiensis Hung T. Chang.
Economically, Camellia is highly valuable for manufacturing tea using the bud and young leaves of C. sinensis var. sinensis and C. sinensis var. assamica.
Another economically important species is C. oleifera, the seed oil of which is used predominantly for cooking. Because tea seeds generally contain oil, other Camellia species are locally important for seed oil extraction.
Last but not least we should mention Camellia as an 'ornamental genus' with C. japonica L., C. reticulata Lindley, and C. sasanqua Thunb. as the most important 'starting' species for breeding new varieties seducing us with color (e.g. the yellow C. petelotii (Merrill) Sealy), winter hardiness (C. oleifera C. Abel and the varieties derived from it), and fragrance (e.g. C. lutchuensis T. Itô).
A directly accessible monograph of Theaceae is to be found in the Flora of China (Ming & Bartholomew 2007; www.eFloras.org)
The 'Caffeines'
The
Caffeine Plants
