Dave it"s nice to see the photos. Do you grow these for the flowers or for making tea?
James in Florida

Hi,

To my knowledge C. oleifera is not grown for tea. It was (and is) grown in Asia for the oil. Another name is Tea-Oil or Oil-Seed camellia.

For me this is just a very hardy fall-blooming species that eventually forms a nice small tree with cinnamon-colored bark. So I grow it for it's evergreen-ness and to some degree, the flowers. But, I have some hybrids which are more interesting. So I may eventually take this one out.

Interesting. I saw one camellia at a local nursery yesterday whose petals were similar to your oleifera (but with a tint of pink on the petal edges); the petals had fallen in some sections of the plant and I thought to myself thst the plant look better with only the yellow anthers (or whatever they are called) still on than with the whole flowers still on.