THE GERMAN TEAS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 27 October 1916, Page 2

THE GERMAN TEAS.

The Royal Horticultural Institute of Berlin has been engaged for some months with experiments on various leaves to take the place of tea. Tea at 8s a pound is too costly a commodity for the ordinary citizen, and a sub stitute had to be found. More than twenty different kinds of leaves were submitted for experiment, but only three were foung to contain —in some measure —those aromatic and invigorating qualities possessed by tea. The leaves of the strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry have given very satisfactory results, and much time and labour have been expended on the cry ing of them and on their decoction. We are told that tea made from strawberry leaves alone is of a yellowish colour, that from raspberries yellowish green, that from blackberry leaves a dusky yellowish green. The authorities who have been brewing these leaves so carefully have come to the conclusion that in all the qualities which makes tea so delicious ancr refreshing a beverage, strawberry leaves are superior to all rivals, and that refined palates whibh have been regaled with strawberry tea, have no desire to return “to the much overrated ang costly Chinese product.”