From “Fascinating Immigrants from the Far East” in Japanese Gardens by Wendy B. Murphy:
“The beauty of Japanese plants — from the satiny shimmer of a camellia to the gnarled elegance of a Japanese black pine — has fascinated Western gardeners for centuries. As early as 1694, Engelbert Kaempfer, a German doctor and naturalist with the Dutch East India Company, returned from Japan with a collection of azaleas, camellias and tree peonies that stunned botanists in Europe….
“Kaempfer gathered his plants surreptitiously and at great personal risk, for shoguns sharply watched the movements of early European traders and explorers. One plant collector was thrown out of Japan for obtaining maps of the islands. Other collectors were in mortal danger of encountering the daimio, feudal princes who believed it their patriotic duty to kill foreigners….
“Despite such obstacles, a slow but steady stream of plants trickled from Japan into Europe and eventually across the Atlantic. That trickle became a flood after Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Tokyo Bay with American warships in 1853, forcing Japan to open trade with the West. Japanese bamboos, azaleas, hydrangeas, hostas, evergreens, lilies, peonies and flowering fruit trees all found adopted homes overseas….
“Today many Western gardeners regard these plants as native, using them liberally in landscapes without realizing their Japanese origins. The camellia, for example, has become so entwined with the folklore of the American South that its Japanese heritage (camellias first arrived in America about 1820) is all but forgotten.”
From “A Camellia Falls” by Yosa Buson in A Haiku Garden: The Four Seasons in Poems and Prints by Stephen Addiss with Fumiko and Akira Yamamoto:
A camellia falls
spilling out
yesterday’s rain
Hello!
This is the second of two posts with photographs of Camellia japonica, one of several Camellia species plants at Oakland Cemetery. The first post is Camellia japonica (1 of 2), where I wrote about this specimen’s especial color characteristics.
As this was the first time I’ve created a series of Camellia photographs, I had not previously learned about the plant, its botanical or cultural history, or its use in Victorian gardens like Oakland’s. I still haven’t learned enough about it, but it’s gotten my attention now and my interest in it will continue as I amble through the gardens on subsequent visits. What I find — especially what I’ll eventually discover about the two Camellia trees I mentioned in the previous post — will emerge here in the coming months. Their blooming periods — whether spring, early summer, fall, or winter — will help me identify the species, point me toward a research direction, and determine when I photograph and write about them.
The excerpt from Japanese Gardens by Wendy B. Murphy that I included at the top of this post establishes a pretty nice historical framework for Camellias to start from, taking us from the eras before Western exploration of Asia, to European exploration and imperialism beginning in the 1600s, then to the 1800s, then to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Any of the four paragraphs could be used as a starting point for research; what direction I go will be determined by which Camellias I actually encounter and photograph — and it should be a lot of fun to uncover the ways in which Camellias “became entwined with the folklore of the American South.”
While digging into Camellia history with the Japanese Gardens excerpt in mind, I came across this…
Timeline of American Garden History
… produced by Smithsonian Gardens, a program of the Smithsonian Institution. The timeline presents the evolution of horticulture, landscaping, and national parks in the United States since the seventeenth century, something of interest to anyone learning or writing about botanical history.
If you scroll to the 1860-1890 decades, you’ll encounter the part of the timeline around which much of my photography and writing here revolves: “Victorian Gardens in the U.S.” The design of these new gardens embraced landscape and architectural themes that were heavily influenced by European Victorian culture. Scroll backward from that, and you’ll discover key historical events that led directly to the development and design of Oakland Cemetery and its continued evolution today:
- 1820, with the establishment of a Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.;
- 1830, with the creation of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts;
- 1830-1840, which fostered the redevelopment and redesign of natural landscapes;
- 1841, when A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening by A. J. Downing helped establish a new cultural and horticultural vocabulary for landscape design, influential on both private gardens and public spaces like Oakland;
- 1860-1890, when Victorian gardens flourished throughout the United States, and our frequently visited Oakland expanded from its original six acres to its present size of 48 acres (in 1872).
When I photograph and write about a single plant species like Camellia japonica here, I typically start around 1860 as an anchor point, then branch out to any time or any place from there. This kind of anchoring and interpretation of geographic spaces is often referred to as genius loci, a concept that — as described in A World of Gardens by John Dixon Hunt — evolved from early Roman assessment of the spiritual significance of a place, to a more secular connotation where we consider the characteristics of a space and create meaning from connections among the elements we observe.
Within this kind of framework, we don’t just see a Camellia japonica in isolation as a lovely plant (even though it is), but instead can spin out a variety of narratives about it that may cross into disciplines like botany, architectural and landscape design, history, cultural history, or — in my work — start from examining its photographic and visual characteristics (as I did in the previous post) then bring other threads in from there. This is, of course, why I don’t post photos on Instagram (not that there’s anything wrong with that) where I can’t unroll a thousand words to go with them, but do it here where I can tell whatever story captures my fancy while I’m working on the photos and bouncing around the Internet.
The Japanese Gardens book also contains the following description of the botanical characteristics of Camellia japonica and related species:
“For centuries the Japanese have grown camellias in their gardens, admiring them for their year-round glossy dark green leaves and profusion of large waxy flowers. Sometimes Japanese gardeners use them as hedges, sometimes as ornamental trees, pruning them to accentuate their shapes. Far less delicate than generally believed, these shade-loving evergreens withstand salt air and polluted city conditions. Their 2- to 5-inch flowers come in pink, red or white, or in mixtures of these shades; the blooms may be single or multi-petaled. The thick, glossy leaves are 2 to 4 inches long.
“In Japan, Korea and China, common camellia may reach a height of 45 feet or more, but in North America it usually grows 6 to 10 feet tall in 15 years and rarely exceeds 15 feet after 20 to 25 years. Some varieties, called early-blooming, flower in midfall; late-blooming types flower in midspring. Sasanqua camellia, which may become 15 to 20 feet tall in its native Japan, becomes only 6 to 8 feet tall in most American gardens, taking 10 years to reach that size. It blooms from early to late fall.”
This description is consistent with how my photographed Camellias look — notably, the glossy leaves and large waxy flowers — but also tells me something about the yet-to-be photographed Camellia trees I mentioned earlier. From the detail in that second paragraph, I could likely estimate the trees’ minimum age; and if they’re taller than fifteen feet, they’re not only older than fifteen to twenty years, but may be capable of exceeding fifteen feet tall simply because southeastern environmental conditions could induce them to reach their native proportions. Now I just have to figure out how to stand on my own shoulders three or four times to determine their height and photograph their flowers….
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
