Camellia

The genus Camellia includes between 100 and 250 species (there is some controversy about the exact number) originating from tropical and subtropical regions of Southeast Asia, China and Japan. They are found in forests located halfway above sea level. A 17th-century Jesuit botanist and missionary, Georg Josephus Kamel (also known as Camellus), described and drew them after a voyage to the Philippines aboard a Spanish galleon; later Carlos Linnaeus named this genus in his honor.

Features

All species are shrubs and trees that can reach 10 m in height. With evergreen foliage, its leaves are leathery, glossy dark green, entire, pointed, and with entire or slightly serrated edges.

The flowers are generally large, with five sepals and five petals (hybrids with double or multiple corollas and a large number of petals have been obtained), their colors vary from white to red through pink and, occasionally, they can appear combined on the same foot and even marbled in those shades. There are several less popular species with yellow flowers.

Perhaps the most widespread species in gardens is C. japonica for being the most frequently used. It is native to Japan in the southeastern part of China and Korea and from it is derived the variety Adolphe Audusson, indicated for indoor cultivation. From the leaves of C. sinensis tea is obtained.

History

In 1735, in his Systema naturae, Carl von Linné named the Camellia two Japanese plants described by Engelbert Kaempfer (probably C. sasanqua and C. japonica which he named Camellia tsubaki and renamed Camellia japonica in his work Species plantarum published in 1753), named after the Jesuit friar Jiří Josef Camel (Latinized as Camellus) became famous for his writings on the flora of the Philippines. Camel never described these plants and did not introduce them to Europe, since camellias do not grow in the Philippines. The first European to describe the genus was the pharmacist and botanist (in Andreas Cleyer) on his trip to Japan in the 1680s.

Cleyer’s remarks on the Distylium racemosum (isunoki) and Camelia (tsubaki)

• Camellia × williamsii
• 

  Camellia × williamsii in Tuinreservaat Jonkervallei, a garden in Frisia (province). March 2020.

• 

  Flower of Camellia × williamsii 'Roger Hall'. April 2021.

• 

  Camellia × williamsii, flower 81 mm in diameter. March 2022.

In the 17th^e siècle, the use of tea in Europe was aristocratic, since the leaves of this plant were very expensive there. The East India Company asked the Chinese to supply them with seeds or young tea plants to break the monopoly of Asian countries. The latter did not supply them with Camellia sinensis but with ornamental camellias of the Camellia japonica type. The United Kingdom realized the deception but, given the beauty of its red flower and its foliage (then it was called the Chinese rose or the Japanese rose), it was cultivated in a greenhouse and a hothouse, and then in the open air in 1739.

The domaine de La Malmaison, bought in 1798 by Joséphine de Beauharnais, became famous for, among other things, the creation of a rose garden and the use of plants recently introduced to France, especially camellias. The future empress launched the fashion in France: by imitation, beds of camellias were planted wherever possible.

The camellia was very popular during the first half of the XIX^e siècle, as can be seen in the novel Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas Jr., to which that we probably owe the franciscation of the camellia genus to an erroneous spelling. In 1806, Ferdinand Favre imported the first seeds from England and had the intuition that the humidity of the Atlantic climate of Nantes made it possible to grow camellias in the ground and in the open air, as long as he accustomed and selected the most resistant subjects. The first work dedicated to camellias is the Monographie du genre Camellia, ou essai sur sa culture, sa description et sa classification by Abbe Laurent Bernard Berlèse in 1837. One of the best iconographies of the genre is the one published by l'abbé Berlèse between 1839 and 1843, a horticultural botanist who has a collection of over three hundred species and cultivars.

Until then only known from a single species, the Camellia japonica (Japanese Camellia), and its cultivars, the introduction of new species at the beginning of the 20th century revived the interest in this genus. [Coco Chanel made it her emblem and launched the fashion of white camellias in buttonholes. Hybridization makes it possible to introduce new characteristics, such as perfume, small flowers and even summer flowering with the first hybrids obtained in the 1930s or the new species Camellia azalea, discovered in 1984 in China.

Some species

History of gardens

Camellias were cultivated in the gardens of China and Japan for centuries before they were seen in Europe. The German botanist Engelbert Kaempfer reported that the 'Japan Rose', as he called it, grew wild in woodlands and hedgerows, but that many superior varieties had been selected for gardens. They told him that the plant had 900 names in Japanese. Europeans' earliest visions of camellias must have been their depictions on Chinese wallpapers, where they were often depicted growing in porcelain pots.

The first live camellias to be seen in England were a single red and a single white, grown and flowered in his garden at Thorndon Hall, Essex, by Robert James, Lord Petre, one of the most enthusiastic gardeners of his generation, in 1739. His gardener James Gordon was the first to introduce camellias to the trade, from the nurseries he established after Lord Petre's untimely death in 1743, at Mile End, Essex, near London.

With the expansion of the tea trade in the late 18th century, new varieties began to be seen in England, imported through the British East India Company. John Slater of the Company was responsible for the first of the new, double, white-and-red-striped camellias imported in 1792. Other imported camellias in the East Indies were associated with the patrons whose gardeners grew them: a double red for Sir Robert Preston in 1794 and the pale rose called "Lady Hume's Blush" for Amelia, Sir Abraham Hume's lady of Wormleybury, Hertfordshire (1806). Camellia was imported from England to America in 1797 when Colonel John Stevens brought the flower back as part of an effort to cultivate attractions within Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. By 1819, twenty-five camellias had flowered in England; that year the first monograph appeared, that of Samuel Curtis, A Monograph on the Genus Camellia, whose five beautiful folio-size color illustrations have usually been removed from the thin text and framed. The camellias they planted, though they did not flower for more than a decade, rewarded their growers with a host of new varieties. In the 1840s, the camellia was at the height of its fashion as "la" fancy flower. Parisian courtesan Marie Duplessis, who died young in 1847, inspired Dumas's La Dame aux camélias and Verdi's La Traviata.

The fashionable overlapping formality of prized camellias was one element of its decline, replaced by the new hothouse orchid. Its post-World War I revival as woodland shrubs for mild climates has paralleled the rise in popularity of Camellia sasanqua.

Ecology

The parasitic fungus of camellia sterile mycelia PF1022 produces a metabolite called PF1022A. This is used to produce emodepside, an anthelmintic. medication.

Due mainly to habitat destruction, various camellias have become quite rare in their natural range. One of them is the already mentioned C. reticulata, cultivated commercially by the thousands for horticulture and oil production, but rare enough in its natural range to be considered a threatened species.

Use by humans

Camellia reticulata It's rare in wild state but it's been cultivated for hundreds of years.

Camellia sinensis, the tea plant, is of great commercial importance because tea is made from its leaves. The species C. sinensis is the product of many generations of selective breeding in order to obtain qualities considered desirable for tea. However, many other camellias can be used to produce a similar drink. For example, in some parts of Japan, tea made from C. sasanqua.

Tea oil is a sweet seasoning and cooking oil obtained by pressing the seeds of C. oleifera, C. japonica and, to a lesser extent, other species such as C. crapnelliana, C. reticulata, C. sasanqua and C. sinensis. Relatively little known outside of East Asia, it is the most important cooking oil for hundreds of millions of people, especially in southern China.

Camellia oil is commonly used to clean and protect the blades of cutting instruments.

Camellia oil pressed from the seeds of C. japonica, also called tsubaki oil or tsubaki-abura (椿油) in Japanese, has been used traditionally in Japan for hair care. The C. japonica is used to prepare traditional anti-inflammatory medicines.

Language of flowers

In the nineteenth-century language of flowers, the white camellia represents pure and lifelong love, and, because of its white color, innocence, purity and humility. The red camellia means admiration, and the rose longing, desire.