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Modern-day white teas can be traced to the 18th Century Qing Dynasty, a time when they were harvested from ordinary tea bushes. White teas differed from green teas in that their processing did not incorporate any steaming or pan-firing. The teas were simply allowed to wither dry. The resulting leaves were thin, small and did not have much silvery-white hair. It wasn't until 1885 that specific varieties of tea bushes were selected to make white teas. The large, silvery-white buds of the Silver Needle came into being in 1891. It takes more than 4,500 hand-sorted buds to make just one pound of this very rare tea.