Tea as a beverage was first consumed in China. The earliest extant mention of tea in literature is the Classic of Poetry, although the ideogram used (Tu, 荼) in these texts can also designate a variety of plants, such as sowthistle and thrush.Chinese literature contains a significant number of ancient treatises on tea. Together, there exist approximately one hundred monographs or treatises on tea published from the Tang dynasty through the end of the Ming dynasty.