A Patented Beauty
Winter is the camellia’s season. Though blossoms are extra early this year because of all the recent warm weather, there is an exciting bright red variety being introduced this year that apparently blooms early every year and sets lots of buds, even when the plant is very young.
It has the Nuccio family, which developed it, so excited that it ran out and patented it--the first in their 66 years of running Nuccio’s Nursery in Altadena, which specializes in camellias and azaleas. The Nuccios have introduced more than a hundred new camellia varieties, including such classics as ‘Nuccios’ Gem’ and ‘Nuccio’s Pearl’ but have never patented one.
Named ‘Nuccio’s Bella Rossa,’ this new variety is a big (5 to 6 inches), classic red, with a very formal arrangement of petals. Jim Nuccio, one of two sons who run the nursery with their father and a cousin, said it may be the best red yet because it sets so many buds and then flowers for several months.
Tim Thibault, curator at Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge, thinks ‘Nuccio’s Bella Rossa’ actually may produce too many buds for exhibitors, who like to remove most buds so those that remain grow to become huge flowers. “It’s prodigious and most gardeners are going to love this one.” Though he likes to observe plants for a number of years before passing judgment, he thinks it is “dynamite.”
However, don’t get too excited yet. This year, the new camellia will be available only at Nuccio’s, though it does have about 800 plants. In the next few years, it will become more available, since one of the largest growers, the giant Monrovia Nursery Co., will be supplying it to local nurseries.
In the meantime, there are plenty of tried and true camellia varieties at nurseries this month and next that not only flower beautifully in their season, but also make handsome year-round landscape shrubs.
If you think they may be too difficult to grow, consider this: Nothing in my garden gets less care than the old camellias growing against the east side of the house, not even the native manzanitas and sages.
These old camellias may get irrigated once in summer, and maybe once in winter, if it’s a dry year. That’s it. They never get fertilized, because that would cause them to grow, and these mature shrubs are already tall enough at 6 feet.
I would guess they were planted in the 1950s and have been living on rainfall alone for a long time yet flower profusely every winter and spring.
Camellias are often associated with azaleas because they like similar conditions, but they are much, much tougher. “They have a reputation as fussy plants, but in most cases it is undeserved,” said Tim Thibault.
As proof, Thibault sent me a list of some very tough camellias indeed, some of which have survived without any care for more than 30 years.
Not many know that when newspaper publisher and businessman Manchester Boddy gave Descanso to Los Angeles County in 1953, he moved half of his camellia collection to his new garden named Wilderness Gardens in northern San Diego County. After he died in 1967, the water was turned off at the San Diego gardens, and the camellias stopped getting any care. In 1982, someone made a list of those that were still growing and blooming 15 years later.
There are two dozen camellias in this list (see the accompanying box), and some of these are still common varieties, worth considering if you are looking for a really tough camellia.
It’s been more than 30 years now since the camellias at Wilderness Gardens, now a San Diego County park, have had any care or irrigation, and park ranger Judy Good says the camellias continue to bloom every year. She also says they can no longer identify the camellia varieties (or even get to some of them) and would welcome any help from camellia experts. Wilderness Gardens is now mostly wild oak woodland, sometimes choked with poison oak. (For more information on the park, call [760] 742-1631.)
Not all camellias are this tough. Thibault knows that some--such as ‘Kramer’s Supreme,’ ‘Feathery Touch’ or ‘Moonlight Bay’--require regular water and care to thrive.
But he has seen camellias growing in their native China, and some grow in very tough spots--on steep rocky slopes or in places that get only 9 inches of rainfall each year, which is less than some of our deserts get. The fact that so many have survived at Wilderness Gardens does not surprise Thibault.
In comparison, the pampered camellias at Descanso get watered about once a week and are fertilized several times each year, though Thibault is experimenting with giving them less fertilizer and water. Thibault’s tests suggest that camellia flowers might last a bit longer if they get water while in bloom but that mature bushes do just fine with much less.
One wouldn’t want to ignore or stress newly planted camellias. It takes years for them to develop a root system capable of sustaining them without much irrigation, and they need regular irrigation for at least the first few years. But certainly older camellias need a lot less care and water than most gardeners think.
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Helping Your Camellias Be All They Can Be
Too much water probably kills more mature camellias than too little, especially when it accumulates around the base of the plant. If camellias are planted in amended soil, they may sink as the soil settles. If the very base of the plant--called the crown--ends up below the soil level, it is vulnerable to diseases that are often fatal.
When you plant camellias, it is a good idea to dig the hole no deeper than the base of the root ball so the crown is sitting on solid, undug soil, which is less likely to settle than dug soil. Be sure to set the plant high, so the top of the root ball actually sticks up a good inch above ground level.
Camellias don’t require pruning like roses do, but if you need to shape them up or keep them in bounds, prune while they are in bloom and use the cut stems indoors or prune right after flowering so it does not affect next year’s buds. Few plants are so easy to prune and shape.
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Really Tough Camellias
These varieties grew at Wilderness Garden in north San Diego County with no care whatsoever between 1967 and 1982, and most are still going strong today:
‘Alba Plena’
‘Berenice Boddy’
‘Chandlerii Elegans’
‘Cheerful’
‘C.M. Hovery’ (‘Colonel Firey’)
‘Covina’
‘Debutante’
‘Eureka Red’ (also known as ‘Sensation’)
‘Francine’
‘Herme’
‘Jean May’
‘Jenny Jones’
‘Kumasaka’
‘Lotus’
‘Magnoliiflora’
‘Mathotiana Alba’
‘Marceila Hovy’
‘Mercury’
‘Mrs. Charles Cobb’
‘Pink Perfection’
‘Prince Eugene Napoleon’ (‘Pope Pious’)
‘Purity’
‘Ragland’
‘Shiro Chan’
