Outside

Virginia marks the normal northern range for camellias to thrive outdoors, although the National Arboretum has introduced several cold-tolerant varieties. Camellias are plants of subtropical regions that love the warm, humid summers and moderately cold, dry winters. Cold hardiness zones 7 to 10 define the camellia belt that stretches down the Atlantic coast to northern Florida, along the Gulf to Texas, and then jumps across the desert southwest to run the length of the Pacific coast from California to Washington.

The genus Camellia has a long and storied history. First domesticated by the Chinese thousands of years ago, it is prized for both culinary and ornamental uses. The young leaves of Camellia sinensis are dried to make green tea or fermented and dried to make black tea. Camellia oleifera is grown for its seeds, which are pressed for delicately flavored culinary oil or for use in cosmetics. (Green tea oil should not be confused with tea tree oil from the Melaleuca alternifolia, an Australian relative of the eucalyptus.)

The British East India Company not only imported tea for English devotees, but also introduced Camellia japonica in the early 18th century to the titled and wealthy. Since camellias could only survive in conservatories, they remained a status symbol through the 19th century. They were hailed by aficionados as the ‘Queen of Winter Flowers,’ according to Stirling Macoby in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Camellias. He writes, “Their waxen symmetry and pure, shining colors epitomized the Victorian ideal of floral beauty.” Images of camellias were embroidered on textiles and painted in still lifes and in portraits of Victorian belles in ball gowns, just as thousands of years earlier Chinese artists depicted them on porcelain and scrolls.

By the 1790s, camellias were introduced to Boston, where they became an instant sensation. As in England, camellias could not survive the cold except in greenhouses. Apparently, the effort involved in keeping camellias through New England winters has not been a deterrent to fanciers. This February, the Massachusetts Camellia Society celebrates its 176th annual show.

By the 1830s, camellias had arrived in South Carolina and Georgia port cities, where they thrived in the hot, humid summers and mild winters. In the early years of the 20th century, Minton Talbot, a Norfolk lawyer and plant enthusiast, brought camellias back from Charleston. Two that he gave to the City of Norfolk were planted at the entrance to the old conservatory in Lafayette City Park and became the parents of countless offspring grown from cuttings. Once it became obvious that Camellia japonica would thrive as far north as Norfolk, ladies from the Garden Club of Norfolk held a camellia show in 1935. A transplanted Frenchman named Fred Heutte later said the show opened a new perspective for him.