This is a little different for me, as Camellias are not a food crop for me (though they may be for some of you, as the source of black and green tea). I mostly ignored them because they were slow growing, and the flowers, while pretty, brought me nothing to compete with roses and hibiscus and dahlias and mums. I was looking for a winter bloomer, though, to brighten up my greenhouse in the darker parts of the year, and I came across the variety ‘Yume’.
This plant was a revelation. Here it is blooming in November on my front porch in zone 7a.
And here’s the same plant, blooming on my front porch in March:
What kind of magic is this? The flowers apparently are only hardy to about 15F, and a freeze below 10 degrees killed them all off. It then proceeded to open new ones after the weather warmed again. I’d never seen anything like it. And I wanted more.
Natively, this hybrid is a bit of a freak, having the genes of a warmer climate species that actually expect pollinators to be around in the winter, crossed with the genes of very cold hardy species. It’s not the only cold hardy winter bloomer, but it has one of the longest blooming periods. And it produces seed readily, so you can see where this is going.
Others, fortunately, have run this experiment before, producing wide crosses, planting them out broadly, and then seeing what survives the cold. This has produced some nice individuals, but the problem with winter-kill experiments is that most of the field is killed off. So, of course, I started collecting these extra cold hardy selections to create my own little grove of beautiful wide crosses. I also acquired seeds of various cold-hardy species to augment them.
My primary goal is more pretty leaves and pretty flowers when nothing else is blooming in zone 7a. In order to reduce dieback and have nice plants throughout winter, though, I think I need to overshoot that goal. And I don’t know where hardy blooms come from, but I’ve got to think they come from even hardier plants. Realistically, I’ve never seen an ornamental camellia credibly labelled as hardy below 6a, and many are likely less reliable there even when advertised as such.
This is a slow project. Seeds take much of the year to ripen, and must be caught when they open before they spill all over. Here’s one year plants, germinated last winter:
Here’s 2 year old plants, germinated the previous winter:
My three year old plants haven’t bloomed, but I’m hoping for something in year 4. We’ll see. All of my seeds this year are getting planted, but maybe next year I’ll have extra to share–they have to be used fresh or refrigerated for a short time with a small amount of moisture, so it’s plant them or lose them. We have a very long growing season here, despite the 7a cold, and many very warm days throughout winter, so I’m hoping to eventually get pollinator-mediated crosses even on the winter bloomers.
