My intention of producing regular videos of the Mount Edgcumbe camellia collection has fallen by the wayside somewhat. Bad weather has restricted how often I have been able to visit and I have only had time for a more limited set of tasks.

When I visited yesterday I had a list of plants I wanted to get photographs of with the aim of getting a set of three flower images for each plant. One that I found flowering was Camellia japonica ‘Elizabeth Dowd’, at 1G-027. The first thing that struck me was that the flowers had pink flecks here and there on the white petals. Secondly, it was in full flower; the other accession of ‘Elizabeth Dowd’, at 1B-016, had been flowering since at least the beginning of January. I took a shoot from the 1G plant down to the 1B plant and compared them; not remotely alike. The Register description and pictures make it clear that the 1G-027 plant is correct and the other one is something else; I currently don’t have a clue what.
Looking at older pictures, the pink specks in the 1G plant have been few and far between, they seem more prominent this year.

Another plant on my radar for checking was Camellia japonica ‘Dr Burnside Variegated’, at 1P-075. There had been an entry in the Camellia competition at the Rosemoor Early Spring Show on 9/3/2024 labelled ‘Paul Jones Supreme’ that I was sure was wrong. I had relabelled a plant at Mount Edgcumbe, labelled ‘Lady Vansittart Blush’, to ‘Paul Jones Supreme’ a year ago, and I felt I had been very certain that I was putting the right name on it when I did so. These are not actions I take lightly. Looking at the plant in the competition I was thinking what it might be and was struck that it looked like ‘Dr Burnside’ but with white viral blotching. But if it was ‘Dr Burnside Variegated’ then the plant in the park so labelled was not. Careful comparison showed it to be ‘Mercury Variegated’, with the plant I was comparing it with having itself been long identified as ‘Masayoshi’ and relabelled in 2022.

I don’t know if I ever made it out to the Zig Zags last year, it’s quite a walk to get there. This is an area that was constructed in the late eighteenth century and at some point, perhaps the late nineteenth century, planted with, amongst other things, a range of Camellias. There were 19 two years ago but when I went there yesterday I found that the number was down to 17. It rather underlined the need to try to propagate at least some of the plants out there, though reaching suitable material would be the first challenge. There are two in particular that, though I don’t know what they are, are superb varieties that would compare well with anything that has come along since.

A great deal of time and effort can be spent on trying to put names to old Camellia varieties and I’m not sure how certain anyone can ever be when so many thousands were raised in the nineteenth century. Even setting aside the tendency of Camellias to mutate into new forms, records from the period are too fragmented and lacking in detail to be able to name a variety with certainty in most cases.
Keeping the good ones going, whether their original identity is known or not, seems like the right thing to do, irrespective of what gets written on the label.