The original meaning of “Dan Cong” is “single bush”, referring to the idea that the tealeaves from a single bush are not to be mixed with those from any other bush and should be processed and consumed as the product from that singular bush.
This is still practiced for some special bushes in the Phoenix and the Wuyi regions. A way to satisfy the market for the taste from those famous bushes is to produce children bushes asexually from the mother bushes and plant them in neighbouring plots so the soil and micro-climate are as identical to the mothers’ as possible. The leaves from these children bushes can then be processed as the extended “single bush” idea.
The reason that the taste from a particular mother plant is different is exactly because Nature has created a unique cultivar through sexual propagation.
In Fenghuang (ie Phoenix), (actually in many other oolong regions as well), cultivar diversification is a big topic. Product diversification through this not only helps marketing, but also production resource management. I have written briefly about such topics in Tea Guardian and will write about it in the future in more details.
The major group of cultivars in Fenghuang belongs to a group of cultivars called Shuixian, which I suspect is rather a sub-variety rather than just a cultivar group, but I need to verify that with more study. Shuixian presently is classified under Camellia sinensis variety sinensis.
There are, however, many other cultivars in that area that are NOT under the Shuixian group.
These are a few photos of different Phoenix cultivars that we have posted in our Facebook page:
These are some pages that touch on the topic of cultivars in Fenghuang:
Do let me know if I have not answered your question, or if you have more.
