Six on Saturday – 11/3/2023

Categories six on saturday55 Comments on Six on Saturday – 11/3/2023

I’m at RHS Rosemoor today, immersed in Camellia matters. They have their Spring Flower Show, which includes the RHS Early Camellia Competition. Down in our corner of the country, conditions have been passable for getting blooms in good condition, I’m not so sure that those from further afield will have had an easy time. In addition to the competition we are going to have a stab at sorting out some of the confusion among the various single white varieties. I will be taking material from 17 plants in the National Collection to assist in that effort. Of those I think maybe six are wrongly identified.

I have three Camellias from my garden in this six, plus three other random items. Three plus three makes six, a number magical enough to draw together an eclectic bunch of gardeners from around the world in a meme we call six on saturday; so called because it entails posting six pictures of things in your garden on saturday, then linking to your post, wherever it may be, from the comments at the bottom of this post. Join in, the more the merrier.

One.
Camellia x williamsii ‘Charles Colbert’ was raised in Australia by E G Waterhouse as a chance seedling and registered in 1959. I just looked at the pictures in the Camellia Register and they’re terrible, so I’ll post another copy of this one when I’m done here. Done, it’s here.


Two.
Talking of chance seedlings, that is what this is, in the sense that I simply collected the seed but had no hand in directing the pollination of the flower. What is remarkable is that the parent was a variety called ‘Lily Pons’, which is pure white. There isn’t anything about this seedling that makes it sufficiently different from a few others to make it worth registering, but I will grow it on and see how it shapes up. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems I may have mixed up the name, it does look very like ‘San Dimas’ and I that has set a few seeds some years.


Three.
Tucked into the corner of the same greenhouse the Camellia is in is this potful of Corydalis ‘Beth Evans’. Some things fare pretty well on neglect, which is just as well. If you can put a name to the plant to its right you get brownie points. I mean the right name, not any old name.


Four.
Another Camellia, and a repeat of one that Fred posted a week or two back. ‘Fairy Blush’, an open pollinated seedling of Camellia lutchuensis raised by Mark Jury in New Zealand. I intend keeping this in a pot so that I can bring it under cover in foul winter weather and enjoy its several months of scented blooms without them getting wrecked.

Five.
Hippeastrum ‘Naranja’, (Amaryllis to some of you) which is actually in the house, just a few feet from my computer. I took it out to the conservatory to take its picture and failed to remove all the yellow leaves from the Fuchsia behind it.


Six.
Just two of the rocks in the bank out the back of the house have become covered in moss. I’ve not noticed it before this year, and given how bright it is, I’m not sure I’d have overlooked it. It gets pretty dry out there in summer but then gets no direct sun from autumn to spring, hopefully it will become a fixture though any attempt to take over the whole area will be resisted firmly. I’ve probably got a book with pictures of mosses somewhere but putting a name to it won’t change anything.

It’s a good thing I’ve mastered scheduling, if it goes wrong I won’t be around to fix it. I’m going to be talking camellias all day. My happy place. See you later.

Published by Jim Stephens

Gardener, no-dig allotmenteer, camellia enthusiast. I love colour, it cheers me up. Retired nurseryman.

55 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 11/3/2023”

  1. Hi Jim, I hope it is ok if I squeeze in a post on Sunday? Apologies!
    I was just going to ask you this week if camellias do well in pots! I presume since you’re going to do that, the answer is yes. I might give that a try.

    I do like the idea of a plant that thrives on neglect and your Corydalis ‘Beth Evans’ is just lovely.

    Here’s my (tardy) post!

    A (last?) visit from Winter

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  2. Pingback: A (last?) visit from Winter | Mom in the Garden

  3. Ah, Camellias! And the other beauties you’re sharing here, too. Thank you; I’m a huge fan of Camellias but my climate is too cold for them. Someone recommended your blog, and it’s lovely. I’ll try to participate in your meme soon.

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  5. Pingback: Six on Saturday: No Room at the Inn | Rambling in the Garden

  6. I’m so glad you have been in your happy place today.

    You had several amusing comments, but this was my favorite today:

    “If you can put a name to the plant to its right you get brownie points. I mean the right name, not any old name.”

    It made the dog look up when I laughed.

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  11. I love seeing your camellias. Hope you are having a great time at the show. Corydalis is a plant I keep on meaning to buy, but yet another spring arrives without one. Maybe next year! As for that twiggy plant next to it without many visible clues, maybe a coprosma? Though I always thought they were evergreen. More bulbs from me this week.

    Six on Saturday | The Big Chill

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    1. I think I’ll put my mystery plant in next weeks’s six. I’ve planted a few Corydalis solida in the garden but they are very ephemeral and other things always seem to move in on them when they’re dormant.

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    1. Yesterday we were just making side by side comparisons. I say “just”, a direct comparison of a piece from an unidentified plant with a well authenticated specimen is a good way to say with high confidence that the two are the same or different. Usually they’re different and you’re no further forward. Genetic analysis has not so far proved very helpful in identifying camellias, they can look identical and be genetically different and they can look different and be genetically identical across whatever number of markers they look at.

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  13. Pingback: March 11, 2023 Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie

  14. Thank you for posting the camellias Jim. In a word, the camellia is an elegant plant deserving of a special place in the garden. Alas, it is. not to be for my camellias this winter. The buds all succumbed to the end of year flash freeze. Forge on and perseve.
    Here is my 6 for the week. Here in the American South we will have a week with low temps hovering near freezing. The urge to plant in the ground must still be resisted.

    https://mensgardenvestavia.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/late-winter-10-march-2020/

    Spring is officially only days away. Happy gardening!

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  16. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Recalibrating Spring | n20gardener

  18. Jim, I hope you are having a wonderful time at your spring Camellia show today. I’d forgotten about the show until reading your post, and so am going to add a seventh photo (with apologies) that was originally in my post this week and then got cut out- in favor of a very furry fern. It is the first bloom on a Camellia shrub I planted out a few years ago and it closely resembles one I nearly ordered this spring from a specialist nursery. Lovely form, but the color is a bit of a siren and I don’t recall its cultivar name. Is the mystery plant behind your Corydalis a rosemary by chance? Some marginally hardy ones I grow look a bit like that at the moment. The cold spell in December nearly killed several. Your moss may be a brocade moss, Hypnum spp. Here are my six (seven) for the week, with everything coming along, as we had another week of spring weather: https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2023/03/11/six-on-saturday-preference-and-prejudice/

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  19. Glorious plants. That camellia breeder E Waterhouse name rings a bell, I think he has one named after him maybe. I think because I’m an Australian garden nut I also am familiar with some plant breeders names. Apart from your scrumptious camellias, I love your very bright hippeastrum, the rock moss looks like slippers.

    My Six are here : https://rosegardenconversation.wordpress.com/2023/03/11/six-on-saturday-garage-sale-and-early-autumn-goodies-11-4-23/

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    1. ‘E G Waterhouse’ is a very fine Camellia that we have over here. Waterhouse would be one of the biggest names though I only have one of his. E R Sebire raised far fewer but I have two of his, Adorable and Annette Carol.

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  20. Pingback: Six on Saturday | The Big Chill – Cornwall in Colours
  21. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Preference and Prejudice – Our Forest Garden

    1. I can generally resist, between my own in the garden and my adopted lot at Mount Edgcumbe, I have most bases covered. There is only one nurseryman at the show, selling Camellias but not generally anything that I’m going to find irresistable. I nearly bought one from him in the autumn mind, rescued by someone else getting in first.

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  25. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 11 March 2023 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

    1. I’ve had Corydalis ochroleuca for many years and it produces hundreds of seedlings of which just one or two survive, just enough to keep it going. I’ve tried to collect and sow seed and usually get nothing, I’ve tried potting up the self sowers and they always fail. I just let them get on with it now; they don’t need me.

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  27. Charles Colbert is particularly lovely, although it’s hard to choose favourites when it comes to camellias. Your comment about keeping ‘Fairy Blush’ in a pot to bring inside if the weather was poor reminded me of those Victorian camellia houses. I once had a dentist whose practice was housed in a Victorian house in Nottingham. The front door was enclosed by a large glazed lobby in which grew Camellias. As a rather nervous dental patient I used to find them immensely calming.

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    2. There were no Charles Colberts in the camellia competition today but there was a Margaret Waterhouse, a sister seedling and very simialr. They deserved a prize for getting it to the show without all the petals dropping off. I was wondering how many blooms they’d brought along to be sure that one stayed intact.

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    1. Would have given your love to Malcolm except I didn’t read this until I got back. I didn’t win any prizes because I was judging not competing. It always feels a bit surreal to be judging the efforts of people like Malcolm but we all take it very seriously and spend a bizarrely long time splitting hairs over the minutest differences between the blooms. How so many people kept so many blooms in good shape over the last week I have no idea.

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  29. San Dimas?! That is an odd town to name a camellia for. I had to look it up, but only found that it was bred there, which I suppose makes sense. I thought that it could have been bred by Nuccio, since San Dimas is only about a half hour drive east of Altadena, where Nuccio’s is.
    Check out my eighty eight cans of empty dirt!

    Six on Saturday: Canna From Heaven

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      1. 32,000 residents would not be there if it was not a good place to be. I really know nothing about it though. I only know that in the Los Angeles region, people often make derogatory reference to such towns that lose their identity within the ridiculously expansive urban sprawl there. A town of 32,000 would be a significant city in most regions, but in that particular region, it is merely a component of the collective.

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    1. N20gardener here. I can’t post on yr site, probably need to sign up but thought I’d share via Jim: Another chance to admire Beth Evans, and good to know yours does overwinter outside. I spread my bets with the clematis – some stems to the ground and some about 40cms. Definitely feeling that all is on hold here too.

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      1. Yes, the same for me, I can’t comment on some of the posts either. I haven’t enough stems up from my newish plants yet, but when they get plentiful, that is a good idea.

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    1. I haven’t tried Hippeastrum in the garden but one I left out in the greenhouse did much better last year than those indoors. I want to try the supposedly hardy varieties outside but only seem to look at bulb catalogues when they’re not available.

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