My note for 1G-006 ‘Blood of China’ is short and to the point, it should be solid red and is bicolored. It’s wrongly labelled, job done, move on, don’t need to look at that again. Well today I looked a little closer. What I saw was that there are bicolored flowers, almost solid red versions of the bicolored flowers and red flowers of a different hue, shape and with quite distinct foliage. Track which blooms are on which branches and it turns out that there are two plants together, one of which is ‘Blood of China’, the other probably ‘Comte de Gomer’.

That was first thing this morning. Practically the last thing I looked at, on my way to the car park, was ‘Rosemary Sawle’. There are two side by side in Area 9, quite different from each other. I concluded long ago that one was in fact ‘Olga Carlyon’. Today I noticed a particularly small bloom on the other plant. You can see it towards bottom right of the picture. Look closely and you will see that the main vertical stem has smaller leaves than the branches to the left with the larger flowers on them. Again, there are two plants together here, ‘Rosemary Sawle’ and probably a self sown seedling of a williamsii cross. In my defence this may be the first time that part of the bush has flowered.

It’s getting towards the end of Camellia season, except for a handful of stragglers. There was a lot to see today though and my camera was kept busy. Here are some highlights to enjoy.