Good pictures for the camellia forum.

#5 reminds of camellia sinensis.

How big was the Portugese laurel?

#11 Interesting shrub, yellowish fall color, but what's it's name?

#5 does in fact appear to be C. sinensis grown for the beverage tea. A nice fall blooming shrub, if for no other reason to grow it for a conversation piece. Here is the trunk of P. lusitanica. The plant must be 10-12' tall and wide. I've never seen it outside of a garden such as this.

'Lu Shan Snow' is plenty winter hardy, probably best used in a breeding program. Look carefully and see the zillions of volunteer seedlings, a real problem.

Sam, I have Prunus lusitanica in my yard. I used to grow C. sinensis in the District. There's a pink flowering version as you probably know.

And I have seedlings coming up from my C. oleifera as well. Though its not a problem yet! Lots of seed fell this fall. Maybe I should squeeze for oil?

Today I heard back from London Town. They are saying that plant #20 which is in my pic #3 is C. japonica 'Spring's Promise'. Does that sound right? What do you think?

Sam, no, if the color in your picture is accurate, that is not 'Springs Promise'. 'Spring's Promise' is much more like a salmon deep pink. But some colors are difficult for cameras to capture faithfully.

Your pic shows a deep red bloom. I would wildly speculate that that one looks like a straight species Camellia possibly collected from one of the Korean expeditions. While most japonicas bloom in late winter to early spring, these can bloom in early winter.

To me it looks closer to Adeyaka, Bloomfield, or Korean Fire.

I think you are right Dave. This pic of #20 was taken on Nov 27. See how dark red the flowers are? Doesn't look like online images of 'Spring's Promise'. I must say that the plants are robust and healthy, notice the flowers don't open all the way. Unfortunately, at this time LT doesn't have the staff to properly identify the plants in their own collection.

Sam, here's a fairly true to color photo of Spring's Promise.

And here's a photo I took (in December, I believe), of some blooming japonicas at the US Arboretum. They were labeled as 'species' and the tag indicated they were from Korea. I suspected they were grown out from seed from one of the Barry Yinger Korean expeditions to find more cold-tolerant plants (read more in link below). These were pretty close to a true red to rose color, even though my camera did not capture it very faithfully. Note how the flowers do not open up all the way. Although your colors look even darker. So I don't know. But it's not Springs Promise.

Read more: Plant Expedition