This delicate little beauty caught my eye at the Sydney Botanic Gardens last week. It’s a Camellia but not the C.japonica variety I’m used to, which is also flowering everywhere I look at the moment. This one is called C.transnokoensis and its flowers are small and bell-shaped. You can’t see the detail in the photo but I think that’s quite appropriate: a romantic photo for a romantic blossom.
I read up briefly on Camellias (thanks to What Flower is that? by Stirling Macoboy in North Sydney Library’s reference section) and they originate mainly from China. Some also come from Japan and its surrounding islands. The Camellia spread to the western world thanks to the tea trade in the mid 17th century. Tea leaves actually come from a Camellia variety called C.sinensis. Apparently Chinese Officials (pranksters) sent the British East India Tea Company the decorative C.japonica variety with its big, glossy green leaves, instead of the tea plant with its tiny tea leaves. What a great story!
Camellias made it to Australia in the 1840s. I have a memory of squashy pink Camellia petals on the grass in my grandmother’s back garden in Sydney’s inner west, and the teacup saucers that she would use to display the top-heavy flowers on her kitchen table, so they wouldn’t fall off their stems. This is the type you might also be familiar with. Our garden is full of pink and red Camellia colour now; and squashy petals. My favourite types are the smaller, more slim-line flowers of the C.sasanqua variety so that’s why the gorgeous specimen in the Botanic Gardens took my fancy.
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