Category Archive for ‘Cultivars’ at Sazanka

Archive for the 'Cultivars' Category

Nokorika – a Higo sasanqua with a strong scent

Published

on September 28, 2009

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According to the book “Nippon Tsubaki – Sasanqua Meikan” (日本ツバキ・サザンカ名鑑):

Nokorika. 残り香 (Lingering Perfume), from Kumamoto Pref.
Deep purplish red occasionally with slender white streaks, single, medium, very early. Leaves elliptic to narrowly elliptic, medium. Upright, vigorous. The original tree survives in Kumamoto City, designated and named by Higo Sasanqua Society in 1968.

I like this cultivar. It has an interesting color, strong scent and general elegance. It is rare and I will keep it. I found it in Reagan Nursery in Fremont, California in Spring 2009. The container had a label “Belmont Nursery” which is somewhat puzzling since Belmont Nursery does not carry this cultivar (see their list of sasanquas). According to their website they carry only the standard set of sasanquas similar to sasanqua offering from Monrovia.

Another interesting thing about this plant – it is a “Higo sasanqua”. Many people know about Higo japonicas originated by samurai clan Kumamoto and promoted in the West by Italian horticulturalist Franco Ghirardi.

See also mention of ‘Nokorika’ in http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~yoshii/sazannkahinnshu/hinnshu1.htm

Continue reading ‘Nokorika – a Higo sasanqua with a strong scent’

Camellia sasanqua Tai-shuhai 大朱盃

Published

Yuri Panchul

on March 8, 2009

in Cultivars and Japan

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Camellia sasanqua ‘Tai-shuhai’ 大朱盃 (たいしゅはい) meaning “Large Vermilion Cup”. According to Nippon Tsubaki　・ Sasanqua Meikan, Tai-shuhai came from Fukuoka Prefecture. The cultivar originated and named in Kurume in 1960s by Shunsuke Hisatomi.

I got the cutting of this cultivar from Nuccio’s Nurseries. When the plant started to bloom on January 20, 2009, I was amazed by the freshness of colors and the shape of its flower:

A new catalog from Camellia Forest Nursery, Fall 2008 – my review

Published

Yuri Panchul

on October 4, 2008

in Camellia Forest Nursery, Interspecies hybrids, USA and oleifera

. 1 Comment

Camellia Forest Nursery is a nursery in North Carolina managed by Kai Mei and David Parks. Kai Mei is a wife of Dr. Clifford Parks (one of the authors of “Collected Species of the Genus Camellia”, 2005) and David Parks is their son.

Mieko Tanaka

The most interesting sasanqua hybrid offered this year is a true red ‘Mieko Tanaka’. Almost all previous “red” sasanquas were actually dark pinks (for example ‘Bonanza’ and ‘Reverend Ida’). The only previous true red was ‘Yuletide’, a chance seedling of Hiryu, originated in Nuccio’s Nurseries back in 1963.

The basic problem with red color is that wild C. sasanqua has no red (or pink) pigment – anthocyanin.

According to Dr. Takayuki Tanaka and other researchers, all pink sasanqua cultivars probably originated from an ancient C. japonica x sasanqua hybrid approximately 400 years ago almost definitely in Japan. The estimation 400 years comes from chloroplast genome DNA (cpDNA) analysis. Additionally, athocyanin chromatography demonstrates that all pink sasanquas (together with x hiemalis and x vernalis hybrids) share the form of anthocyanin with C. japonica and does not have pigments specific for C. reticulata and C. saluensis.

Based on this information, Dr. Tanaka was working on sasanqua-japonica hybridization and finally he developed a cultivar ‘Mieko Tanaka’ (C. x vernalis ‘Gaisen’ x C. japonica).

Plain Jane, O’Nishiki, Winter’s Rose and Winter’s Red Rider

Another important cultivar now available for sale in Camellia Forest Nursery is C. oleifera ‘Plain Jane’. This plain white flower has two distinctive quantities.

First of all, it is one of the most cold-hardy camellias, used by Dr. William Ackerman for his cold-hardiness hybridization program. For example, Dr. Ackerman claims that his cultivar ‘Winter’s Rose’ (C. oleifera ‘Plain Jane’ x C. x hiemalis ‘Otome’) can survive winter temperatures down to -15 F / -26 C.

Second, according to Dr. Ackerman, ‘Plain Jane’ may be used to create dwarf cultivars that are useful as patio and bonsai plants. Particularly, ‘Winter’s Rose’ is also a dwarf camellia. When Dr. Ackerman crossed ‘Plain Jane’ with C. sasanqua ‘O’Nishiki’, he got 3:1 mendelian ratio between normal and dwarf seedlings. This suggested that both ‘Plain Jane’ and ‘O’Nishiki’ carry heterozygous alleles of a dwarfiness gene. (Yes, I know that both plants are hexaploids – so an additional explanation from Dr. Ackerman is needed).

Luckily I got cuttings of ‘O’Nishiki’ last Summer from Mr. Garet Uemura who lives in Hawaii. Thank you, Mr. Uemura!
Continue reading ‘A new catalog from Camellia Forest Nursery, Fall 2008 – my review’

‘Nodami Ushiro’ – a Higo-like sasanqua

Published

Yuri Panchul

on September 16, 2008

in California, Cultivars, Japan and Toichi Domoto

. 3 Comments

Camellia sasanqua ‘Nodami Ushiro’. Introduced by Domoto Nursery, California, 1934, but is originally from Japan. Stirling Macoboy believes that the name means “a backward glance” in Japanese, but he is probably incorrect. Since I cannot find this name in Japanese sources and my Japanese wife tells me that Japanese people are not likely to name a flower this way (“mi” meaning “body”), I guess that the original name was different. From browsing the history of Toichi Domoto I got an impression that he did not know Kanji well because he was a second-generation Japanese-American. Because of it, Toichi Domoto probably made a naming mistake when he imported it.

It is difficult to explain what is so special about ‘Nodami Ushiro’. It is a single pink camellia with a lot of single pink competitors – ‘Plantation Pink’, ‘Cleopatra’, ‘Tanya’ and others. However Jennifer Trehane in her camellia book calls ‘Nodami Ushiro’ “a subtle, sophisticated camellia”. Where does this sophistication come from? I have an explanation.
Continue reading ‘‘Nodami Ushiro’ – a Higo-like sasanqua’

Camellia grijsii

Published

Yuri Panchul

on March 13, 2008

in China, Small-leaved, Species and grijsii

. 3 Comments

This month The International Camellia Society put two of my camellia photo pictures to the front page of their website. One is a picture of Camellia japonica ‘Kamo Honnami’ (see their website), and another is a picture of Camellia grijsii, a species related to C. sasanqua:

Camellia grijsii
C. grijsii

Camellia grijsii (长瓣短柱茶 in Chinese) Hance (1879) is a wild species of section Paracamellia. It is related to C. sasanqua, C. oleifera and C. kissii. It was collected in 1861 in Fujian by C.F.M. de Grijs. It is distributed in China (Fujian, Hubei, Sichuan, Guangxi) and used for a high-quality oil production. C. grijsii is closely related to another species – C. yuhsienensis, that is a parent of a popular cultivar ‘Yume’.

I got my two plants of C. grijsii from Nuccio’s Nurseries. The first one (shown above) has single white flowers and the second one is a double-flowered Chinese cultivar called ‘Zhenzhucha’:

Camellia grijsii 'Zhenzhucha'
Camellia grijsii ‘Zhenzhucha’

Camellia grijsii has great hybridizing potential. Two plants in my garden have small leaves with impressed veins and very columnar shape. I believe there are also varieties with larger leaves, but I am specifically interested in small-leaved cultivars.

Another great feature of C. grijsii is its cluster-flowering habit. However in my garden C. grijsii flowers from January to March, so it will be a challenge to cross it with Fall-flowering sasanquas. Probably I will have to store some pollen from sasanquas in refrigerator for a couple of months.

Another problem is chromosome number. According to Kondo and his associates it has a variety of chromosome numbers 2n = 30, 60, 75 and 90 (see the reference in Collected Species of the Genus Camellia, an Illustrated Outline by Gao Jiyin, Clifford R. Parks and Du Yuequiang).
Continue reading ‘Camellia grijsii’

Species and cultivars gallery

Published

Yuri Panchul

on December 28, 2007

in California, Camellia Forest Nursery, China, Great Britain, Interspecies hybrids, Japan, Nuccio's Nurseries, Small-leaved, William L. Ackerman, Yuri Panchul, books and oleifera

. 0 Comments

1. Introduction

Yuri Panchul Garden

2. Wild form

↑ Camellia sasanqua, selection ‘Shikoku Stars’. Thunberg 1784. Native to southern Japan: southern Shikoku, Kyushu, Ryukyu islands. Thought to be a geographical variant of C. oleifera native to China. Grows up to 26 ft (8 m) Flowers early fall to mid-winter. Chromosome numbers: 2n = 90 (wild forms), 45-120 (cultivars) (Kondo, 1977).

Archive for the 'Cultivars' Category

1. Introduction

2. Wild form

3. Big white single

4. White double

5. Single pinks

6. Double pinks

7. Semi-formal pinks

8. Peony pinks

9. Anemone pinks

10. Dark pinks

11. Yuletide and Hiryu

12. Bicolor

13. Egao group

14. Oleifera and Ackerman hybrids

15. Other species and hybrids

16. Low growing and small foliage

17. Foliage

18. Credits

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