Camellia sasanqua

I have a camellia in the garden here.
It blooms very abundantly for the fact that it is now also winter here. So far I have never had a camellia in the garden and now I am learning something about it.
For example, that it produces flowers extremely early in the season.

Camellia sasanqua, is a species native to southern Japan. It is usually found growing up to an altitude of 900m.

At the beginning of the Edo period (1601 until 1868), cultivars of Camellia sasanqua began appearing; the first record of the cultivars of this plant was made by Ihei Ito (1695–1733). The Japanese call it Sazanka.

This plant was not known in western society until in 1820 Captain Richard Rawes brought it to Thomas Carey Palmer, of Bromley in Kent. Then in 1869, Dutch traders imported some specimens into Europe. It has now also been introduced to Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

It has a long history of cultivation in Japan for practical rather than decorative reasons. The leaves are used to make tea while the seeds or nuts are used to make tea seed oil, which is used for lighting, lubrication, cooking and cosmetic purposes. Tea oil has a higher calorific content than any other edible oil available naturally in Japan.Read more