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!
It would be cool if these dated back to the 1800’s, but they’re beautiful in any case. I’m sorry they can’t be grown here in the north.