Cultivar
Hokumei
ほくめい Hokumei
Hoku (北, north) plus mei (茗, an archaic word for tea) — Saitama Prefecture's own cultivar page glosses the name as お茶の北限に近い埼玉で生まれた茗, a tea born in Saitama near the northern limit of tea growing. NARO's handbook states the same sense from the other side: the cultivar has strong cold tolerance, and the name carries the wish that it spread at 茶栽培の北限, the northern limit of tea growing. The registered name is written entirely in hiragana, so no kanji form is asserted here.
A Saitama cross of Sayamamidori against a Yabukita seedling line, registered in 1992 as Cha Norin No. 43 and again under the Plant Variety Protection Act in 1995, Hokumei was bred for the cold northern edge of Japan's tea belt and named for it — it out-yields Yabukita and beats it on both winter cold-scorch syndromes, while inheriting its disease weaknesses unchanged.
Hokumei is a Saitama sencha cultivar bred for the coldest ground in Japan that still grows tea, and named for the ambition rather than the achievement: NARO’s handbook records that the name was chosen carrying the wish that the cultivar would spread at 茶栽培の北限 — the northern limit of tea cultivation. Saitama’s breeding programme had been aimed at that problem since the 1940s, and Hokumei is the generation after Fukumidori: the same station, the same target, a cross made against Sayamamidori instead of Yabukita.
Lineage
- Sayamamidori ♀ — Cha Norin No. 5, itself a Uji zairai seedling selected in Saitama.
- Saitama 13 ♂ — recorded by NARO’s handbook under that station number, and by MAFF’s registry
as 5507, an open-pollinated Yabukita seedling. See
conflicts; the two are plausibly the same line under two numbering schemes.
Whichever reading is right, Yabukita is in the ancestry on the pollen side, and Sayamamidori carries Uji landrace stock on the seed side. Sayamamidori’s other documented offspring — Okumusashi and Toyoka — are therefore Hokumei’s half-siblings, all three out of the same prefectural programme.
History
Registered in 1992 as 茶農林43号 under the station strain name 埼玉31号, and separately under the Plant Variety Protection Act in November 1995 as registration No. 4775. Both dates appear in circulation as “the” registration year; they are two different registrations of the same plant, the same two-track pattern that makes Fukumidori appear as 1986 or 1988 depending on the source.
Characteristics
Plucking runs three to five days after Yabukita, placing Hokumei on the late side of mid-season — later than Yabukita, well ahead of Okumidori. The bush is upright (直立型) with vigour slightly above Yabukita’s, and yield is higher than Yabukita across both the first and second flush, which NARO rates as on a par with Sayamakaori.
The cold-tolerance claim in the name holds up: against both winter cold-scorch syndromes, 青枯れ and 赤枯れ, it rates stronger than Yabukita. Its disease package does not improve on its grandparent at all — anthracnose, ring spot and mulberry scale are all rated weak, level with Yabukita — so what the cultivar buys a northern grower is winter survival and yield, not a lighter spray programme.
Lineage
A controlled cross at Saitama's tea experiment station, and one whose pollen parent is recorded two different ways by two official sources. Either way Yabukita is in the ancestry on the pollen side, since MAFF describes that parent as a Yabukita open-pollinated seedling, while Sayamamidori brings Uji landrace stock in on the seed side. Sayamamidori is also the seed parent of Okumusashi and Toyoka, which makes those two Hokumei's half-siblings.
Where the sources disagree
- Pollen parent: MAFF's Cha Norin registry table gives the 来歴 of 茶農林43号 as さやまみどり×5507（藪北自然実生） — Sayamamidori crossed with a numbered Yabukita open-pollinated seedling. NARO's tea cultivar handbook (6th ed.) gives さやまみどり（♀）× 埼玉13号（♂）. These are not necessarily different claims: a station commonly carries one line under both a seedling number and a prefectural line number, and 5507 could be the seedling that became 埼玉13号. No document stating the identity was found, so this record follows the handbook's form for the parent name and records MAFF's alongside it.
- Registration date: 1992 is the Cha Norin designation; November 1995 is a separate Plant Variety Protection Act registration, No. 4775. Sources quoting one or the other as "the" registration year are both partly right, which is the same two-track pattern seen in Fukumidori and Kirari 31.