10 Rupees Ceylon Tea 150th Anniversary

Ceylon's commercial tea industry traces directly to a single catastrophe: the coffee blight of the 1870s, when Hemileia vastatrix devastated virtually the entire plantation economy within a decade. Scottish planter James Taylor had already established experimental tea cultivation at Loolecondera Estate in 1867, and that foresight transformed what was a disaster for coffee growers into the foundation of an industry that would come to define the island's exports for the next century and a half.

The 150th anniversary falls from that 1867 planting date.