There are two ways of growing a new tea plant. You can plant a seed, or a cutting.
Here, Rajiv Gupta, grower at the Tumsong Tea Estate, explains how the roots of a tea plant grown from seed (on the left) reach deep into the ground, while the roots of a tea plant grown from a cutting (on the right) spread out and don’t go very deep. This has important consequences in terms of how the plant withstands bad weather, dryness and soil erosion.