Content
Camellia japonica: Camellia
One of the best-known and most popular winter-blooming ornamental shrubs is the camellia.
They come in several thousand varieties, ranging from pure white, pink, or dark red to
plants with multicolored blossoms.
Almost all of them are descended from a single species, namely Camellia japonica.
Long prized in China as a decorative plant, its cultivation soon spread to Japan.
The camellia originated in the mountains of southwest China, where it grows as a
slender, six to nine meter tall tree with five-petalled, generally red flowers.
The camellia first arrived in Europe, or more precisely England, in 1731.
The genus Camellia includes about 80 species. The most commercially important
is a near relative of the ornamental camellia, Camellia sinensis, the tea shrub,
which you can see here in House 11.
With the name Camellia, Linné honored the Moravian priest, botanist, and zoologist
George Joseph Kamel, who was born in Brno in 1661. As a Jesuit missionary in the
Philippines, Kamel collected, recorded, and sketched the local flora before his death
at the age of just 45.
Audio file download
Camellia japonica: Camellia (MP3, 541 KB)
© 2022 Botanical Garden München-Nymphenburg