Growing conditions for tea (altitude, rainfall, drainage)

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Tea is agronomically fussy in a way that determined the whole geography of this story: it wants warm humid conditions, high and reliable rainfall, acid soil and — critically — sharp drainage, because the roots rot in standing water. That combination is found on hill slopes rather than plains, which is why the plant is native to the eastern Himalayan and Yunnan uplands and why the British sought hill land in Assam and the Darjeeling ridge rather than the Gangetic plain. Altitude also changes the product: slow growth at height concentrates aromatic compounds, which is the agronomic basis of Darjeeling's later premium. The constraint is why tea could not simply be grown wherever an empire wanted it.

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