Gardening : Tough Taproot Camellias Don’t Mind Drought
Camellias and azaleas are the undisputed monarchs of Southern California shade gardens. No other shrubs we grow can beat them for their year-round good looks and long cool-season display of flowers.
So treasured are they that gardeners sometimes lavish more water and fertilizer on them than they actually need. Root rots and foliage burns can result, caused by salty irrigation water and excess fertilizer.
Camellias and azaleas are so often planted together it’s easy to assume they have identical water needs. Actually, camellias can stand drier conditions because they are deeper rooted and are grown in soil. Azaleas are best planted in coarse peat moss, which provides acidity and aeration but dries out quickly in hot weather.
Just how much dryness can camellias take? Opinions vary depending on where and why the camellias are being grown. The Sunset Western Garden Book, a standard reference for local gardeners, says that camellias that have been in the ground three to five years can survive on rainfall alone. Run that statement by L.A.-area growers and you’ll hear an almost unanimous chorus of “Maybe in Northern California, but not here!”
Hobbyists who grow camellias for exhibition-quality blooms are adamant about ample watering. Sergio Bracci of San Gabriel, president of the Southern California Camellia Society, has raised countless prize-winning flowers.
“Never let camellias dry out in the summer while they are setting flower buds, or the buds will drop off,” he advises. “After all, the flowers are 80% to 90% water.”
On the other hand, Julius Nuccio, partner in Nuccio’s Nurseries of Altadena, emphasizes the toughness of camellias as landscape plants. He harks back to the days of the Great Depression, when gardens in Pasadena, Sacramento and other older communities endured years of extreme neglect. Most ornamental shrubs died, but well-established camellias carried on with rainfall only.
Similar results were noted after the severe water rationing imposed on Northern California in the mid-’70s. The oldest camellias, giants 15 to 20 feet tall, lived through entire summers with no watering, even after unusually dry winters.
In their native Asian habitats, Nuccio points out, camellias are subjected to long seasonal droughts every year. Traveling to the Kunming area of southwest China, a region that has the greatest concentration of wild camellia species, Nuccio saw camellias thriving in full sun on steep, rocky hillsides where no rain falls for six months of the year.
He adds that the dry season there is winter, so it doesn’t follow that camellias could easily live through our hot summers with no extra water.
The major difference between wild camellias and those you buy at a nursery is that wild ones have long, woody taproots that draw moisture from the depths of the soil. Nursery plants are either seedlings that have had their taproots nipped or have been grown from cuttings. In either case they have shallower, more spreading root systems.
Plants with their taproots pinched grow better in nursery containers and are easy to transplant even if they have been growing in the ground several years. A plant with taproot, however, is more drought-tolerant and, in Nuccio’s words, “a tremendously superior plant.”
If you want to grow a camellia with an intact taproot from seed, you can start now, but it will take three to five years for a seedling to bloom.
Seeds gathered from the Huntington Botanical Garden’s famous camellia collection are available from the Southern California Camellia Society (P.O. Box 3690, Arcadia, Calif. 91066). The minimum order for Camellia sasanqua is 100 seeds for $5; C. japonica seeds are 100 for $7 and C. reticulata seeds are 25 cents each.
If you are interested in growing camellias with taproots, you might try the sasanquas (fall blooming and sun tolerant with delicate flowers), as they have especially sturdy, disease-resistant roots. Sasanqua seedlings usually resemble the parent plant closely.
Should you be dissatisfied with the flowers of your seedling sasanqua, any type of camellia can be grafted onto the sasanqua’s roots. By serving as understock for another variety, the sasanqua root system provides vigor and tolerance to drought.
When you get your seeds, mix them with a quart of moist (not wet) peat moss and put them in a glass jar atop the water heater, where the gentle heat will hasten germination. The seeds sprout sporadically, so check them after two weeks and at weekly intervals.
A seedling with a taproot more than an inch long is ready to plant. Fill a container at least 12 inches deep (narrow, extra-deep plastic containers called tree pots are perfect) with a mix of equal parts sand and peat. Poke a hole in the soil with a pencil and insert the root, leaving the seed itself sitting on the soil surface. Gently tamp the soil so it fills in around the root.
After a year, the seedling should have four to eight inches of top growth and a taproot to the bottom of the container. It can then be planted in the ground.
