What a treasure, and beautiful. I would love to see you do a short story about the history of this plant (and the other you posted) for the American Camellia Society Journal.

It is very true most people do not know that camellia can be very old like a timber tree. I visited Sichuan province, China and saw two over 1,200 years old camellia japonica trees. I have the picture of one ancient camellia tree here and the three large tree trunks, actually being the secondary growth. The original tree trunk is leaning down in contacting the soil.

The evolution of camellia can be millions of years. C japonica forest can be found at Japan, east coast of China and south of Korea. One Japanese camellia scholar went to China about 10 times to trace the origin of camellia evolution. He points out that the origin might be possible C. pitardii. There are millins of timber size C pitardii in central south China. Through millions years it developed into many species( there are about 250 camellia species and over 95% species are only found in China). Many camellia species are so much like C japonica in appearance about their bush size, leaves and flowers. The C japanica was merging as one of 250 species.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:502719}}

The flowers of the ancient camellia on ground

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:502720}}