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Decaf Tea Found In The Wild (asianscientist.com)
Chinese scientists have discovered a type of tea plant that naturally does not produce caffeine. They published their findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. From a report: In 2017, Americans drank nearly four billion gallons of tea, according to the Tea Association of the US. The association estimates that up to 18 percent of those drinks were decaffeinated. To decaffeinate tea, manufacturers often use supercritical carbon dioxide or hot water treatments. However, these methods can affect the brew's flavor and destroy compounds that are associated with lowered cholesterol and reduced risk of heart attack or stroke. In the present study, researchers led by Dr. Chen Liang at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences studied hongyacha, a rare wild tea found in the mountains of southern China. They used high-performance liquid chromatography to analyze hongyacha buds and leaves collected during the growing season.
Or maybe to encourage browsing and seed dispersal by birds and mammals while discouraging insect attack.
Tea has caffeine in the leaves. Coffee has it in the seeds. Neither species benefits from these being eaten.
Neither birds nor non-human mammals like the taste of caffeine.
Btw: "Hongyacha" means "red bud tea".
In every language the word for tea is similar to either "tea" or "cha". If tea first came to the country by sea, they adopted the Fujianese word "ti". If it came by land, they adopted the word "cha" used in northern China and along the Silk Road. The only exception is Japanese which uses "cha" despite tea first arriving by sea.
I read the article. The plant still produces a similar, related methylxanthine compound, theobromine. Drinking the tea will still have many of the effects of caffeine.
Except for all these other languages. Did you learn that "fact" from the slashdot story a while back? You shouldn't believe everything you read on this website.