Camellia's in full bloom

I thought I'd show off a few pictures

2

I planted this one but don't even remember the name of it.

E-guy, Please tell me that you did not take those photos today. I have just come in from moving the lastest blanket of 6" white stuff so I can get around just to do essential chores and it would just break my heart to know you had something other than a landscape of "Alba". Ken

Yep, I took them today. I even spotted a daffodil blooming.

Sweet Escambia!!

here some that blooming on campus now. The funny thing is that the id tags all said they was Azeleas. LOL Somebody made the 60 bush name mistake for sure. Actually glad they did. I love so see the double's and the semi doubles especially.

really like your Peppermint and White one.

Sweet Home Alabama. We are seeing the same. I'm a transplant from the Hoosier state - just 26 years here. One of the many nice things we get to see. Thanks for the photos.


edited to delete typo.












This message was edited Jan 1, 2007 4:29 PM

Escambiaguy: that looks like Prof Sargent on the top. Mine is blooming too, a little late this year.
Is the 2nd photo an old camellia==2 different flowers on the same bush. Mine is doing that, also. Pink and pink and white stripe.
I have a white one also, a double with exposed stamens, not fully double like yours.

Yah. Yah. My sister came from Michigan one year and decided to move down here because of the camellias. They bloom for Christmas! (She didn't move yet).

Show off some more, Escambiaguy!

that daf is a prococious (sp) little devil. they usually start in February here.

Here's one more that I have. That one in the second picture isn't as multicolored as it seems, I think it's a sunlight and shadow effect.

Gloria, all of mine (except the white one) are over forty years old and around 10-15ft tall.

LOL... Took 40 years to load the big pic, but was well worth it. Beautiful!!!!! Is it fragrant at all?

Honestly I've never tried to smell them, but I wouldn't think so. Even though camellias don't provide food, I have noticed that birds like to nest in them in the winter. I'm assuming that the thick waxy leaves provide good shelter.

Ive never noticed that camellias are fragrant, maybe some of the sasanquas. But, tea you know, grows on a camellia. Does it smell like tea before it is made into tea?

Well, I am a "Nawthunuh" who has always loved camellias too (I luv the way you Suthunuhs drawl...), and for those who long for them, they do great in cool greenhouses and sunporches in the nawth. And for me they are a lot easier to grow than orchids which I kill right and left, and they are better at blooming in the winter. I have a few in bloom now and I even ran out to take some pics this afternoon but my partner Jim is hogging the laptop so I can't get on, and I can't load pics onto this desktop. But I definitely noticed that a few sasanquas are fragrant, notably one called 'Rainbow' I got from Nuccio's years ago, which had very sweet smelling single flowers. I never read that any sasanquas were supposed to be fragrant but this one definitely was. Japonicas and japonica hybrids are not fragrant.

I have killed more camellias than I have grown to maturity but now that I have a real cool greenhouse I have high hopes again and most of my container plants are going great guns. And for those who want to save on the high cost of gas heat -- turn the thermostats WAY down and spend your money on camellias instead! If you get your nighttime temps down to 50ish, and you have some bright rooms, you can grow them like the Victorians did.

I guess I have to wait for the pics till tomorrow...

I forgot to say escambiaguy that I loved your pics, especially the white which looks like my old favorite "Nuccio's Gem". I can't wait to acquire and grow that one on again now that I really have some space for it. Looked just like your white photo, a beautiful formal white double.

http://www.amazon.com/Old-Fashioned-Words-What-Makes-Southerners/dp/0874836603/ref=pd_sim_b_1/002-6919666-3096020

Hey Chad! David5311 sounds like Kathryn Tucker Windham!

woops! The link was to Kathryn Tucker Windam's Old-Fashioned Words (What Makes Us Southerners) at Amazon.com.

Ya know, I really never thought I had a strong southern accent until I went to NYC a few years ago. I stayed at a very "posh" hotel on 42nd St. and every time I opened my mouth it was obvious I wasn't from there. LOL

Newbie gardeners in the south do need to realize that camellias need some shade. You wouldn't believe how many scorched ones I see around here. I know someone that had a yard full of beautiful tall pines (I considered it a perfect yard). Well, after hurricane Ivan he became scared that they could fall on his house someday in another storm so he had every one of them cut down and replaced with a lawn. Then one day his wife decided that she wanted to plant some camellias, and other shade loving shrubs. I flat out told her that "once upon a time" she had the perfect environment for them, but not now. She didn't listen and planted them anyway and they look awful! Mine are growing underneath oak and pecan trees and are thriving. They seem to love the decaying leaves too.

There was about 60 of us who took a survey to see of 20 different C. japonica cultivats which we liked best just from sight. The top three were La Peppermint 1st, Magnoliaeflora looks white but classified as a pink 2nd, and Glen 40 for a red. yet Governor Mouton i supposed to be the biggest seller. I actually liked Dr. Tinsley for which is a light pink, semi double.

Has anybody seen C. sasangua up close. I would really like to know if it is really a lavender on the outside or justa pink shade.

Anybody ever treated their vegatative buds with gibberillc acid. Since your not supposed to do more than a few buds at a time, I wonder why even bother.

Have never seen any of the C. vernalis or the C. hiemalis. Maybe they just don''t grow down here. Heard where the C. hiemalis are spreading and compact. Does that mean that they are like the spreading Gardenias that grow low to the ground? That Showa-No-Sakae is supposed to be a soft pink semi/double rose form. Thought it might be nice to ring trees with if it woudl sprd a round them.

Escambiaguy: When I went to NYC i realized I wasn't from there either. I grew up in Northern Michigan, much "Nawth" of David 5311 in Ann Arbor. Nobody talks like a true New Yorker. But, after awhile you get the knack of listening WHAT they have to say. I still have difficulty with some rural dialects, but people usually get across what they want from you.

Starlight 1153: Camellia Sasanqua is a type of camellia, like vernalis or C. hiemalis. They come in a range of shades from white through all pinks pale to dark, and lavender. Not sure about red.
They also come in a variety of shapes, including a twisted spiral sort of swashtika (sp) form. there is a lavender similar to the Lavender Althea.

Camellias are wonderful flowers and they appear to live indefinitely. There are many in Alabama over 100 years old. Many from before the civil war at old home sites. They need to be protected. Road crews love to attack them with chain saws.

Yep. Mighty pretty. l was down home visiting family in Elmore Co.(AL) the week before Christmas, and my BIL had several japonicas and sasanquas in full bloom - all nestled in among pines & oaks on their densely-wooded lot. Lovely. Made me think, again, about the need to trial some of the 'cold-hardy' camellia selections up here.

E-guy, you DON'T have an accent! LOL
Knowhutyoumean, though.
I grew up in AL, did a 5-yr stint in TN, then 4 yrs in MO, and when I moved to KY, one of the first things I did was to contact the state licensing board, and the girl there, who fielded my call asked "Where'd you get that accent?"
What accent?
I'm presuming she meant my east-central AL accent. I dunno. Folks around here talk fairly 'Southern', even if it is the frigid northland.
My wife is a central KY girl, who spent 4 years in AL while in vet school, then the stints with me in TN & MO - and while we were in MO, folks often asked if she was from TX or AR, 'cause she had 'an accent'.

That just shows what little MO people know, and how you have to show them everything. lol

Before anyone replies, it's just a joke! A little Kansas-Missouri humor(from the Kansas side of course lol)

mine also

http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/93926/

Red Sasanqua

LL, if all those buds open together it will look awesome.

Ive seen it in nurseries. It is pretty awesome. Usually blooms in time for Christmas. --hence, Yuletide is its name.

How pretty!!!!!!!! I have about 60 cuttings rootign now. Will have to wait til they get big enough to bloom to figure out what they are. They was given to me. So far they doign good, but am wondering if I shouldn't have tried starting them in water cuz they sure are being slow to root. Been over a month already and while alive no roots on the scene yet.

My C. japonica been blooming. It a single red, with a yellow center. I do like the doubles better. A lot of the buds got zapped when we hit 16F here even with a cover over them.

Starlight1153: Are you using bottom heat?

OK finally a couple of camellias from the Nawth. Unfortunately y'all are probably going to be perturbed with me because I don't know some of the variety names. So y'all will have to just get ovuh it and enjoy them without the names.

First a nice deep rose pink single, with somewhat funnel shaped flowers. This was in full bloom through Christmas and I brought it up in the main part of the house. It has lost quite a few flowers but it still mighty pretty

The plant in its container --outside on a 48 degree January day

This message was edited Jan 3, 2007 9:04 PM

A little dwarf sasanqua, 'Twinkle Twinkle'. I have to look for relatively dwarf varieties, otherwise they get too big too fast. Only a few cute little flowers on this one

An unnamed yellow variegated plant with lovely large coral pink flowers. I have some better pics of this somewhere from past years, but I will post this one anyway. I got this plant from the former Allen Haskell's wonderful nursery in New Bedford MA. Allen had the finest collection of container grown camellias I had ever seen. I got a very cool weeping dwarf camellia from him that blooms later in the winter too

Nope, ,no bottom heat. Have them outside in my big homemade greenhouses. During the day it hot in their and the humidity is high. Have them solid black tarps on the floor of the greenhouses. Thought they might be warmer there. When the temps get low here at night it drops down to between 40 and 50F in there til the sun comes up.

Do I need some bottom heat under them? Any suggestions on how to do it in the greenhouse? Below is a pic of the second one in the process of being built and trying to move plants in at the same time before the cold snap came. They both a little over 20' x20'. Built them from scrap wood and put chicken wire on the top to re-enforce and put layers of 6 ml poly on them and built a swinging door from scrape pieces of fence and covered it with plastic too and then from the main ultility box ran six 60 watt light to each one. Gathered a bunch of new pallets to put the pots and flats on. Total cost 70 bucks for plastic and two boxes of staple gun nails. Everything else I gathered for free. : ) Still got enough scrape wood and stuff to do two more. Just gotta get some more plastic.

Stunning!

I have grown some others over the years, my favorite being 'Nuccio's Gem' and the sasanqua 'Snow Flurry'. The latter got to be a pretty good sized container shrub for me (5-6' tall and wide)before I finally killed it by benign neglect. Of note to Nawthunuhs who want to try camellias outside, I once left this plant outside in its containuh over a 5 degree F Thanksgiving weekend, and it still survived and barely suffered any foliage burn. I also grew 'Winter's Rose' outside over one season at the old place before it died. I have more, better protected spots at the new place and better sandy soil, so I am trying a couple more

Levilya. When your blooms open, please post some pics. Those are some really huge blooms. Really nice looking bush ya got!!!!!!!!!

LOL David!!!!!!!! Love your new accent. Funny thing is I was born in Michigan and all my relatives on my Dad's side all live in Michigan still. When we moved to Cleveland, folks all thought I had an accent. Came South and folks thought I was a Northerner. Now I call home and they say I sound like a Southerner. Don't forget to add the Sug in there too. heeheehee : )

Your Twinkle Twinkle is nifty looking. What a really different shape the blooms have in it. May have to see about getting that one. Would never have reconginzed it for a Camellia off hand if you hadn't said it was one. Sweet!

http://www.gardengrapevine.com/BottomHeater.html

cheap heat

I'll toss one in here. This is my favorite one.

Very nice sasanqua CoreHHI. Do you know the name?

Very, very nice Core. Makes ya wanna reach out and cut all them blooms and bring them in the house and put in a vase.

Wish somebody would create a yellow Camellia. Could ya just imagine a bright sunny yellow double one???? Wonder if Camellias have caratonoid pigments that could be eventually brought out?