teatray (tetra)

A tray for serving tea, transporting tea-things, etc. tea-tree (te'trē), n. 1. The common tea-plant or tea-shrub. See tea1, 2.-2. A name of various myrtaceous and other plants, chiefly of the genera Leptospermum and Melaleuca, found in teazer, n. See teaser. Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. See phrases below. Very abundant and conspicuous, especially in New Zealand, is L. scoparium, the broom teatree, known also as tea - scrub. It is an erect rigid shrub, or in the mountains prostrate, from 1 to 12 feet high, forming dense thickets, with leathery sharp-pointed foliage, covered for two months with abundant small white blo oms. Its wood, though small, is hard and useful for turning, etc. L. lanigerum, the Tasmanian tea-tree (found also in Australia), is a somewhat larger, very abundant shrub or tree, with a hard even-grained wood. The leaves of both are reputed to have been used by Captain Cook or early colonists as tea, which may account for the name, but the native Australian name of the former is ti. Melaleuca un cinata, the common tea-tree, is a shrub, or sometimes a tree from 40 to 80 feet high, with hard, heavy, durable wood, widely diffused in Australia. Even the gra itself is not indigenous, all these hills [in New Zealand] having till recently been densely clothed with a thicket of tea -tree, which is a shrub somewhat resembling Juniper or a gigantic heather-bush, its foliage consisting of tiny needles, while its delicate white blo oms resemble myrtle. It is called by the Maoris mana