CAMELLIAS
It is not really surprising that Georg Josef Kamel (1661-1706) never saw even a dried herbarium specimen of a camellia. A Moravian apothecary, in our eyes Kamel more than doubled the value of his calling as a Jesuit missionary by cataloging the medicinal plants of the Philippines, where he began to botanize in his late 20’s. How many souls he may have saved for the Roman Catholic Church has not been recorded, at least on Earth. But his brilliant botanical discoveries, sent to his English correspondent John Ray, were published by Ray in 1704, and constitute the first systematic study of the rich flora of the Phiippines. They appeared under the Latinized form of his name, as was then customary - Camellus – which the great Linnaeus (born a year after Kamel’s death) assigned to the genus Camellia in tribute to Kamel’s work. Linnaeus was always gracious and free-handed with the honors that were his to bestow, and so Kamel’s ignorance of Camellias matches that of many other distinguished botanists, such as Leonard Fuchs, (1501-1566), to whom a living fuchsia would have seemed a miracle.
The genus Camellia contains approximately 250 species, widely extended from northern India and the Himalayas through China and Japan and into Indonesia. They are among the oldest of cultivated plants, not only for tea, evidence of which exists well before the third millennium B. C., but also as a fermented “green food” that could be left in the ground all winter and then prepared with garlic, oil and dried fish as part of the desperate attempt to fill the hungry gap between autumn’s plenty and spring’s abundance. The wood of camellia trees is strong, close-grained and hard, making it suitable for carving into utensils and tools. Venerable, tree-like plants also provide an unusually high grade of charcoal, if one can bear to think of them that way. The seeds of camellias, particularly C. japonica, produces oil of great medicinal and cosmetic value. In its various species, then, the camellia was so useful that its cultivation has been insured from most ancient times to the present. And if, as 18th century philosophers argued, beauty follows use, then the camellia is almost without compare among garden flowers, a fact that the earliest Asian literature noted.
Plants, like words in poetry, are both beautiful in themselves and also for the associations they trail behind, the histories they have in the world and in one’s own life. Our own history with camellias stretches back over 30 years, when we bought our first four plants in promising bud in early autumn at the old Heimlich’s Nursery, in Boston, and brought them back to pot up in Vermont. We bought the pots, too, fine honeyed orange ones that flared from the base to a roll at the top, one of which still remains with us, and still holds a camellia, though not any of the original ones. They were the blood-red, anemone flowered ‘Professor Sargent,’ the old informal pink ‘Debutante,’ the formal double ‘Alba Plena’ of stunning white, and ‘Pink Perfection,’ another formal double with petals that looked as if they had been carved of the clearest inner shells of some sea mollusk.
Of those first four camellias we grew in Vermont, we would still defend three, leaving out perhaps only the redoubtable ‘Debutante,’ the pink of which has a shade too much blue in it, and the flowers a little too much looseness. We regret not having kept the others, because when a camellia can be made happy it is happy forever, and 30 years is nothing in its life. But we moved on, to other plants, even to other camellias. When, from indifference or some minor unintended failure of theirs (or ours!) they grew poorly, or we got simply greedy for another pretty face and tossed them away, their individual beauty continues to tug at us, long past the grave. ‘Pink Perfection’ is doing that, though it has been 20 years since we had it in a pot.
The first camellias we grew in the ground at North Hill were part of our general conviction that whatever else our brutal newly- adopted climate brought us, we would still have a bit of the mildness of San Francisco here in Vermont, however tiny it had to be. We wanted to step out the side kitchen door into that dewy freshness and flower, even if it was only one step, even though the real world out the front door was howling with sleety ice and bitter cold. So we designed a small winter garden protected by poured cement frost walls and with rich soil open to the living earth. Camellias were important there from the first, planted in the ground with a fine, cherry red leptospermum, a ceanothus pinned to the wall, jasmines of several sorts, tender rhododendrons, and even a Magnolia grandiflora, the very compact cultivar called ‘Little Gem,’ because we thought it might be important, in a space hardly 14’ by 24’, to be thrifty with space.
Most of all that has gone now, as we shifted to new plant interest such as Daphne blouha, with its rich floral scent at Christmas, or the gaunt old wisteria, a huge, 10’ tall bonsai in an old clay tub that occupies the coldest corner and will rain fragrant ivory flowers come in late winter. But there will always be camellias there, and now some of them would be the envy of any established Southern garden.
There’s an 8’ tall ‘Yuletide,’ a sasanqua actually, with bleached-bone trunks and small, inch-long laurel-black leaves in which the flowers nestle, blood red and flattened around a boss of golden stamens. It is the first to bloom, and on a clear November day, it smells gently of tea, a reminder that its near relative, Camellia sinensis var. sinensis , is the source of that ubiquitous beverage. Across from it is a higo camellia, one of the so-called snow camellias of Japan, anciently cultivated because their relatively low stature, to 5’ or so, allowed them to be covered by mountain snow until the mild weather of spring, when they bloom with unusual freedom. All Higo camellias are single, and ours, called ‘Toyo-nishiki’, is variegated, as the word “niskiki” always indicates, with rich, carmine red stripes staining in random widths its broad, rounded white petals. They begin by cupping a two inch wide boss of many stamens of the clearest golden yellow, which loosens into a sort of pillow as the petals flatten to reveal a pea-green eye, actually the fertilized ovary.
Midway down the house and across the fieldstone path from ‘Toyo-nishiki’ is a broad, four foot tall bush that bears the rather inelegant cultivar name ‘Bernice Boddy.’ We always did think it would sound better if given a strong French pronunciation (Bay-ray-niece Bo-die) but the lady in question is known, having been the wife of the founder of one of the most remarkable camellia plantings in North America, Descanso Gardens in San Diego, where many fine camellias were hybridized. In a good year, Mme Boddy can produce hundreds of flowers from mid-September until the end of February. They are technically semi-double, which means that three rows of petals will overlap to produce a somewhat cup-shaped flower. They are of clear luminous pink, the special quality of which is given by washes of deep and light pink over a white, crinkled base.
The only other camellia in the Winter Garden is ‘Katy,’ a very tall-growing upright variety that has now achieved 10’ in the highest far corner of the lean-to structure, and produces its flowers, visible from the open window over the sink, quite late for a camellia, usually not until February. They are formal doubles, with many petals are laid in alternating layers to create a flattened, perfectly crafted flower that most people would imagine the ailing heroine of Dumas’ play La Dame aux Camellias to have worn. Poor ‘Katy’ has an almost embarrassing vigor, however, and must receive a severe annual pruning just after flowering to keep her from bursting through the roof into a world she would not find to her liking. But flowers are abundant as a result, and of a pretty bright pink, perhaps with a shade more blue in them than should be, without which ‘Katy’ would be put into real competition with our still-mourned ‘Pink Perfection.’ (And to accommodate which, she may soon be shouldered aside.)
Four mature camellia plants is hardly enough for a long winter, even if they are joined later by tender rhododendrons and azaleas, orchids, fragrant daphnes, jasmines and wisteria, with the quiet comfort of our venerable standard bay tree and several old standard tubbed boxwoods, tucked along the path. So we found we were acquiring new camellias, grown in pots that found winter lodgings sometimes in the winter garden, sometimes in the lower greenhouse, and once (with disastrous results, for camellias hate house temperatures maintained for the comfort of humans) in what we thought was a rather cold spot in front of the living room French doors. When we had acquired 10 or so fine bushy plants in 15” clay pots, and come to love their extra flowers, always in the darkest time of our year, we realized that we had a collection – a passion, actually – that required attention. This happens often, and we have learned over the years not to ignore the signs. For that is where joy lies.
Finding a suitable place to over winter a rather large collection of potted camellias turned out not to be so very difficult. Almost from the first construction of our simple house, a narrow little building connected it to the barn, providing a unified front and helping to gentle the precipitous slope down to the stream. We called it the woodshed though it never did much but float between the two larger structures, ripping away from the one and pushing against the other, and so we were cautioned by builder friends not to load it up with too much firewood. It therefore became a storage shed, which simply meant a place to put anything you could not find a place for otherwise. It housed breeding pigeons at one time, and a brood of guinea keets as they careened toward even more manic maturity. Mostly, however, it was a mess. And it continued to wiggle sideways, no matter how light a burden of domestic detritus it was asked to bear.
In aspect, this small building is hardly desirable for greenhouse space, for though its exposure is east-west, it is low and dark, and further, is shaded on the east side by the house and barn, and by a towering and much treasured old yew tree. For camellias however it seemed ideal, since they have the engaging quality of blooming when they are essentially dormant in winter. They also demand only minimal heat – somewhere between 45 degrees at night and ten degrees higher in daytime - which could be supplied by pipes beneath a paving of antique brick, which, in addition to being a pretty surface on which to stand the pots, served as a sponge, providing the plants with their only other winter requirement, enough humidity practically to grow moss on the window panes.
So far, thirty potted specimens, including a tea plant grown as bonsai, have found winter quarters in a space barely 20’ by 12’. There is no way into it except through an outside door on the west side, which is hardly the first compromise we have made with what real estate agents call “accessibility.” But on a blustery winter day, there is something quite splendid about opening the heavy plank door and entering a world fecund with earth and mould and rich with flower, glowing against black-green leaves. We think, by the use of pressure-treated 4x4’s of varying heights stood on end, we can increase the number of our collection to perhaps 50 plants, maybe more. After that – so strong is our addiction – that we are not sure quite what we will do.
Best Wishes from North Hill,
Wayne Winterrowd
Joe Eck
