"Space Cowboy" > wrote in message

> Don't make me rise up from Davy Jones' Locker if I ever discover that the
tea bush is allowed to
> flower in Japan for whatever reason.

What do you mean ? Tea bush do flower and the rest of the flower becomes
seed...or they don't get any seeds to plant new teabush or to show to
visitors of the * tea museums*.

>Can you describe the surface of the wulong and TGY tuocha and how hard
> it is.

They are just like the mini-tuochas of puer in the same brand, except they
made them sligthly larger for wulongs
and shapes are a little different for each kind so you can tell which is
which. For that brand, they are not very smooth and not very hard, you can
break away a few bits with your finger.
For puer, they sell the mini-tuochas cheaper than their tuo chas (that are
hard and smooth) and spare leaf puer, and the mini-tuocha contains broken
leaves and stalks, it's obviously a by-product and it's meant to be drunk
today, not stored to get older.
For wulongs, tuochas are obviously a marketing trick, as they are more
expensive (by weight) than the spare leaves and is done of the same leaves-
that get broken in the process.

> It could very well be that the one
> tea I described as a seed is really a seed.

A seed of what ?

> The larger pod and nugget is definitely rolled leaf and hard beyond belief
with a completely
> smooth sealed like surface.

That can be they took a leaf with an attached young leaf not yet opened.
They put them in that *glue* (the stuff made of "maybe" ginseng powder)
before rolling, and coating it again. Then the chunk of glued leaf is the
hard object and it's so well stuck that it never unfolds in your pot. Did
you try to open the seed ?

> I mentioned before the TenRen King tea with American Ginseng you find
behind herbal
> counters.

Not all the ginseng teas have the *bird sh...* style.
Last time I had ginseng tea, that was leaves not even rolled + bits of
ginseng. You can't tell before opening the package.

Kuri