Tea-Oil Camellia

Camellia oleifera Origin: China Improvement status: Landrace Seeds per packet: ~10 BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED Life cycle: Perennial Few Americans not of Chinese descent have any clue that the humble tea plant has a close cousin with enormous seeds brimming with delicious edible cooking oil. And yet the Tea-oil camellia is just that! Sometimes referred to as "Eastern Olive Oil," it is one of the world's four major oil-bearing tree crops (along with olive, palm, and coconut), and it's the only one that grows in temperate regions, hardy to Zone 6. [Tree nuts like hazelnut, walnut, and almond also produce edible oils, but on a far smaller scale.] EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman was so excited when he found out Sheffield's Seeds was importing tea oil camellia seed from China that he bought five pounds of the stuff, which we're just as excitedly making available to all of you now. He'd been on the lookout for it for years, ever since first tasting tea oil purchased at a Chinese m