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Camellia japonica (1 of 2)

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From “Camellia” in Garden Flora: The Natural and Cultural History of the Plants In Your Garden by Noel Kingsbury:

“Camellia contains 125 species: about 104 in China, with more than 80% concentrated south of the Yangtze; some in Korea and Japan; and then more in Southeast Asia. The genus is thought to have originated in southern China in the Cretaceous. In the name, Linnaeus commemorates 17th-century Czech botanist Georg Kamel….

“The current range of species in cultivation encompasses three main species, each with a long history of east Asian cultivation: Camellia japonica (2,000 cultivars), C. reticulata (400 cultivars), and C. sasanqua (300 cultivars).

“Camellias are typical evergreen understorey trees, being an important part of the forest community, usually in regions with moderate to high year-round rainfall. They are relatively slow-growing, appear late in the successional process, and can live for centuries….

“Literary and pictorial evidence suggests that camellias have been cultivated in China as ornamentals for at least 1,800 years. The Song dynasty saw a lot of creative breeding, probably mostly with Camellia japonica, and the use of grafting to produce plants that combined multiple varieties; the Song capital of Hangzhou became a centre for growing and trading the flowers. Camellia sasanquawas also cultivated during this period. The next major stable dynasty, the Ming, saw the first books published on camellias.

“In Japan, Camellia japonicawas taken up by the samurai in the 12th century and was much further developed in the Edo period. The Higo clan were very interested in them, and it was they who introduced C. sasanquainto cultivation in the 17th century…. “

Hello!

This is the first of two posts with photographs of a lovely small shrub that I took a few weeks ago at Oakland Cemetery. The plant is Camellia japonica, one of the many Camellia species and hybrids that are as frequently gardened in the southeast as azaleas and magnolias — especially popular since there are varieties that produce flowers from late fall through early spring when other flowering plants are dormant. In A Garden of One’s Own, Elizabeth Lawrence describes how Camellia japonica and its relative Camellia sasanqua (mentioned in the excerpt above) make excellent garden companions, as C. sasanqua blooms around Christmas in the southeast and C. japonica blooms not too long after, creating a succession of Camellia blooms across several months. Camellia japonica may flower here as early as January and as late as April, and it’s often called Japanese Camellia (though its origins are both Japanese and Chinese), or Common Camellia.

From a photographer’s perspective, though, this plant and its flowers are anything but common. The flowers in full bloom show a striking blend of magenta and red, with red increasing in intensity as you get close to the center of the flower. I was fortunate to have photographed this plant on a relatively bright but overcast day, where the gradations between magenta and red are much more evident. Bright yellow sunlight tends to “blow out” red colors and diminish the appearance of magenta (which is actually its own distinctive blend of blue and red). On a sunny day, you would likely perceive the flower as red, but in filtered light the contrast between the two colors becomes much more apparent.

If we zoom in as far as possible in Lightroom, we get a look at the individual pixels (each square in this screenshot is one colored pixel captured by the camera) from a quarter-inch section of the flower petals. This shows both the intensity of the colors and the extent to which they’re mixed together to produce the blend of red and magenta.

While they appear to be single, solid colors, these pixels are actually the camera’s interpretation of how much red, green, and blue (RGB colors and their relationships) are present in each one. Pixels toward the top of the screenshot (closer to the flower petal’s center) are shades of red, while those toward the bottom (near petal edges) are mixes of red and blue that produce magenta. How much red or how much blue is present determines how close the lower colors get to pure magenta (which contains equal amounts of red and blue). And if you imagine this image separated into horizontal thirds, the middle section contains the largest collection of mostly-red and mostly-magenta pixels adjacent to each other, which our eyes will interpret as the gradual boundary where the colors shift between magenta and red.

For complex reasons involving camera sensors, their capabilities, and their jobs as visual interpreters, the color red can be difficult to capture accurately, often rendered as oversaturated when photographed. With biological subjects like flowers — where each single pixel may represent hundreds of colored flower cells — the camera averages or balances the results within the range of colors it can reproduce. With flowers whose colors are closer to pure red, reducing saturation is often sufficient to restore their natural appearance. But with flowers whose colors are blends of red and magenta, the camera’s limits become more apparent, where red adjacent to magenta (which contains a lot of blue) produces an effect similar to chromostereopsis, the visual “vibrating” characteristic of red letters on blue backgrounds, or vice versa.

Here we see the original version of the photograph I shared above, where red is oversaturated and the boundaries between red and magenta demonstrate chromostereopsis…

… while simultaneously causing a red color cast across the yellow stamens at the center of the flower. Correcting colors in a flower with these tonal combinations becomes a bit experimental in Lightroom, where it’s necessary to reduce red saturation overall but also adjust blue hues so that the smooth gradients we saw in real life are faithfully reproduced in the image. Here I’ve posted the two photos side-by-side (before then after)…

…where (I hope) it’s apparent that the adjustments reduced the excess red, restored the gradual visual transition between red and magenta colors, and clarified the yellow color and detail at the flower’s center.

This is the first time I’ve produced a series of Camellia japonica photographs from my Oakland trips, because most of them are the same red/magenta blend for which I’ve only recently developed a color correcting method I’m satisfied with. They’ll likely get additional space here in the future; but I’m intrigued about Noel Kingsbury’s statement above that Camellias grow slowly but can live for centuries. I often pass by a pair of enormous Camellia trees — one with white flowers and one with dark red/magenta flowers — that are fifteen to twenty feet tall with equivalent width. I’m wondering now, since they’re located in the cemetery’s original six acres, if they may date back to the cemetery’s 1850 founding or at least have been growing there for several decades. I’ll see what I can find out; stay tuned!

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Hellebore Hybrids (3 of 3)

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From “Breeding Hellebores” in Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide by C. Colston Burrell and Judith Knott Tyler:

“What makes perfection? Most [hellebore] breeders select stock for vigor, color, form, and the other more obvious facets. We all want perfection: a healthy, floriferous, disease resistant plant with bright, long-lasting flower color inside and out. Interesting sepal markings, colorful nectaries, a full boss of stamens, and styles in a contrasting color are all desirable traits. Add foliage with interesting structure and presence, and you approach perfection….

“We are particularly interested in selecting for the color on the reverse of the flower. The lovely insides of hellebore flowers are the reward we get for bending over to turn them up, but the backs of the flowers are what we see most often. We find that the color of the fading blossom is almost as important as the color of the freshest flower. Many parts of North America experience warm or even hot weather during the flowering season, which fades the flowers. If a plant has a pleasing tone as it ages, the period of interest is prolonged.

“Contrast also makes flowers distinctive. Stars, rings, blotches, or other center markings are as attractive on faded flowers as on fresh ones. Dark nectaries and even dark styles stand out against pale sepals. A white-flowering plant with red nectaries and styles is beautiful when freshly opened. When the nectaries fall after pollination and the colored carpels begin to swell with seeds, the darker tones of the carpels are very appealing. Some consider foliage the most important trait when choosing hellebores, since foliage is present in the garden year-round. Foliage of the hybrids can vary greatly in size and shape, offering another path on the numerous avenues available for the hellebore breeder to explore.”

Hello!

This is the third of three posts with photos of Hellebore hybrids (Helleborus x hybridus) from Oakland Cemetery, that I took in February 2026. The first post is Hellebore Hybrids (1 of 3), and the second post is Hellebore Hybrids (2 of 3).

In our previous two episodes (haha!), we observed the differences between Hellebores with relatively simple (but still delightful) colors, tints, and patterns, to some with more distinctive color variations and stripes. The photos I saved for this last post advance from there and include the most visually distinguished Hellebores I found, where genetic enhancements have produced impressive variations in colors, patterns, and textures. Some of the differences are subtle at first glance or in isolation, but become more visible when viewed close up, by comparing the plants to each other, and when using words to describe them instead of just relying on the visuals.

Before continuing, let’s talk about one of the Hellebore’s distinctive botanical assets. It’s common to refer to the colorful parts of the plants as flowers, and their component parts as petals, since this is how we observe their similarity to other flowering plants. But Hellebore flowers (as described on Wikipedia) actually consist of “five petal-like sepals surrounding a ring of small, cup-like nectaries” — so I’m going to refer to them as sepals rather than flower petals below. That “the sepals do not fall as petals would, but remain on the plant, sometimes for many months” accounts for what appears to be an extended blooming period for Hellebores; and, as I saw at Oakland just yesterday, most of the Hellebores I photographed in February are just as vibrant now as they were six to eight weeks ago.

Here we see a partially opened flower exhibiting the Hellebore’s typical nodding — or botanically speaking, cernuous (“with a face turned toward the earth”) — habit. Purple veins are present both on the insides and outsides of each sepal, with those on the inside displaying more saturated purple veins at greater density — evident in the sepal at the far left and in the purple reflection cast by the sepal at the far right. As the sepals spread open, then, the intensely colored veins — which follow the plant’s water distribution channels, or vascular architecture — will be highly visible to pollinators and function as a visual guide or runway leading to the plant’s nectar, right near the point where the vein color is most saturated.

Here, on a plant with more elaborate sepal shapes, we see similar veining. In this case, however, the veining is accompanied by scattered spots inside the sepals, especially adjacent to or just beyond the end of the vein tributaries. As with the previous plant, the veins serve the same purpose; the spots, however, were more likely produced by breeding efforts to exhibit an additional visual characteristic for an ornamental plant like a Hellebore.

In this third image, we see veining that looks like it was deconstructed into scattered spots. While our pollinator runway analogy may fall apart at this point, notice how the distribution of spots still vaguely resembles veining, but perhaps more importantly maintains a visual relationship where the colors are most saturated close to the nectar-producing parts of the plant. Whether a pollinator sees this differently than the previous plant, we probably don’t know — but the color saturation likely entices that pollinator to get to the same point. The thin veins with adjacent spots look a bit like a purple net cast over the sepals, and the style is sometimes referred to as netted — which fits.

In this final comparison, we see most of the veining has been engineered out of the sepals. Instead, the underside of each one has produced dozens of large, highly saturated purple spots in a pattern that is most dense toward the inside edges of the sepals. If these spots look to you as if they have texture — are not flat like the spots on the previous image — it’s not your imagination. The spots do feel like bumps to the touch, a characteristic called papilla, or a “small, fleshy projection on a plant.” That their texture came through in a photograph surprised me; but if you enlarge the image and look closely, you may see why. Each spot — an accumulated column of purple-colored cells — is darker at the top and lighter at the bottom, something we visually interpret as texture or depth even with a two-dimensional representation like a photograph. Or, as I like to think of it: piles of color eventually turn into texture.

Here I’ve placed the four plants we just reviewed next to each other as snapshots to highlight their visual differences — and as a way of seeing their color, contrast, texture, and form variations in a single glance.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Hellebore Hybrids (2 of 3)

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From “Hellebores Throughout History” in Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide by C. Colston Burrell and Judith Knott Tyler:

“Throughout history, hellebores and humans have been intertwined…. In Europe and America, long before they were valued for their ornamental qualities, hellebores were in demand for their medicinal prowess. The botanical name Helleborus may derive from the Greek roots helein, which means to kill, and bora, food. The literal translation is ‘food that kills.’

“The ancients knew the black hellebore, believed variously to be H. niger, H. foetidus, H. cyclophyllus, or perhaps H. viridis….

“Under the feudal system, plants were grown as crops, not only for food, but also for medicines, materials for clothing, and for various other uses, with the majority of the rural population foraging to collect their potherbs and medicaments. Hellebores, as with other plants used for medicinal purposes, were wild crafted or kept in apothecary gardens. In The Herball (1633), John Gerard noted, ‘We have them all in our London gardens.’ Pleasure gardens were the provinces of the aristocracy — they were at least confined to the wealthiest homes, and even these concentrated on useful plants. Growing a plant for purely ornamental purposes might have been incomprehensible to the commoner. But in time, hellebores and other plants grew in aesthetic importance as people began to heal their souls as well as their bodies….

“These days, hellebores are the height of fashion. Why? Because they are remarkably beautiful. They open their nodding flowers in the bitter winter chill when few other plants dare to greet the new year. Beauty aside, they are tough, low-maintenance plants, and they are long-lived….

“Hybrid garden hellebores (H. × hybridus) have attained a level of perfection never before dreamed possible. Gone are the muddy mauves and greenish whites of Beebe Wilder’s day. Through breeding programs in England, Holland, and the United States, today’s hybrids offer a level of color saturation and form not seen just a few years ago. Hellebores surely occupy a preeminent place in American and European horticulture.”

From “Summer Wish” by Louise Bogan in An Anthology of Famous English and American Poetry, edited and introduced by William Rose Benet and Conrad Aiken:

The year’s begun; the share’s again in the earth.

Speak out the wish like music, that has within it
The horn, the string, the drum pitched deep as grief.
Speak it like laughter, outward. O brave, O generous
Laughter that pours from the well of the body and draws
The bane that cheats the heart: aconite, nightshade,
Hellebore, hyssop, rue, — symbols and poisons
We drink, in fervor, thinking to gain thereby
Some difference, some distinction.
Speak it, as that man said, as though the earth spoke,
By the body of rock, shafts of heaved strata, separate,
Together.
Though it be but for sleep at night,
Speak out the wish.
The vine we pitied is in leaf; the wild
Honeysuckle blows by the granite.

Hello!

This is the second of three posts with photos of Hellebores from Oakland Cemetery, taken by The Photographer in February 2026. The first post is Hellebore Hybrids (1 of 3).

The plants are Helleborus x hybridus or Helleborus orientalis, most likely the former, given the many Hellebore variations that Helleborus x hybridus encompasses. Common names — many with cultural significance — include Christmas Rose, Lenten Rose, or Winter Rose, depending on the species encountered, the historical era, or the geographic location.

With this post, we advance from the visually simple white or lightly tinted flowers of the previous series to some with more prominent veining, as well as hybrids with distinctive alternating bands of purple and pink colors. The three images at the end of this post demonstrate that genetic variation quite precisely, where there are defined boundaries between the two colors — an effect likely attributable to extensive cross-breeding in the latter part of the twentieth century. Yet compared with some of the other variations among these photos, you can almost see the potential for this style to emerge, as if the genes expressing the colored bands are present but not fully developed until we get to those last three photos.

Since my knowledge of the plants was somewhat limited, everything I’ve learned about them in the last few days feels like a surprising discovery. The history I excerpted at the top of this post — from Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide — is assembled from the opening and closing paragraphs of the book’s detailed historical essay on Hellebores, from its ancient medicinal use through its expansion into European and American gardens from the sixteenth century on. That history is noteworthy in that the authors link Hellebores to various modern eras — such as the Victorian era and the post-World War II era — and provide comparisons between the plant’s use and presence on the two continents separately. If you’d like to read the whole thing yourself, the book is also available on the Internet Archive to check out, at Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide.

There are also about 1,200 books of poetry on the Internet Archive’s Books to Borrow site that mention Hellebores by either its botanical or common names — a number not quite as substantial as flowers that are frequently featured in poetry like irises, daffodils, or tulips, but a respectable number nonetheless. These poems, often as not, refer to the plant’s darker characteristics — like the stanzas from the poem “Summer Wish” by Louise Bogan above — because its toxicity had been so well established in classical and medieval culture. The poem is delightfully long and presented as a conversation between two voices discussing the arrival of spring and describing the landscape’s preparations for summer. The full poem — originally written in the 1920s — is available here.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!