THE HARDINESS OF THE CAMELLIA. 



375 



are not so easily procured, the Camellia and 

 Daphne give the green-house or conserva- 

 tory a rich and gay appearance ; almost 

 making us forget the dreary season without. 



As the Camellia accommodates itself 

 easily to a high or low temperature, it 

 answers the purposes of the gardener admi- 

 rably. To have Camellias bloom, early, 

 the manner of forcing them is different 

 from any other plants in cultivation, — such 

 as the Rose, Geranium, Heliotrope, Verbe- 

 na, Primrose, Cactus, &c. As these buds 

 are produced on young shoots, you give 

 them heat for a few weeks before you re- 

 quire the flowers. Not so with the Camel- 

 lia. To have an abundance of flowers from 

 it in December, it is necessary for them to 

 have made their growth in March or April 

 previous, so that their flower buds, (which 

 are all set eight or nine months before they 

 open,) maybe showing themselves in June. 

 With such plants, and with a house kept 

 at 45° to 55^ in winter, you will have abun- 

 dance of flowei's in the December following, 

 and may continue this habit of early bloom- 

 ing every year, without injury to the plants. 

 This is truly making the Camellia a green- 

 house plant. 



Let us see if it can be made a hardy 

 plant with us, in the U. S. According to 

 your remarks, it can be used as a hardy 

 plant in most of the southern states. Here, 

 in Philadelphia, it is certainly impracticable. 

 The foreign notice, in your magazine, says 

 the Camellia lives out of doors in some parts 

 of England without protection, through very 

 severe winters, and retains the most robust 

 health. 



In the hard winter of 1837-8, it bore 

 there, without shelter, a temperature of 0° 

 Fahrenheit, or 32° of frost. We do not 

 doubt the assertion, although it does not 

 say whether the plant was injured or not. 

 That same winter, in the Horticultural Gar- 



dens at London, the writer says Camellias 

 stood in 4-inch brick pits, — the glass having 

 only a covering of mats ; one of them, the 

 Camellia retiadata, occupies the same place 

 it did then, and no plant can possibly be in 

 higher health, or flower more gloriously. 

 As it occupies the same place, we presume 

 it is planted in the pit, which accounts for 

 it doing so well. 



The Camellia is a plant, with the culture 

 and management of which, although sim- 

 ple, few amateurs, and not a great many 

 gardeners, are thoroughly acquainted. It 

 is usually considered, here, a tender green- 

 house plant, which, should it be exposed to 

 one or two degrees below the freezing point, 

 the flower buds will not open. So that the 

 whole beauty and profit of the plant is lost ; 

 and should six, or even four degrees of frost 

 get into the house, they would be considered 

 worthless, or, in reality, dead. This opi- 

 nion is, indeed, quite true with some varie- 

 ties, while other varieties or species would 

 not be injured in the smallest degree, even 

 in their flowering. 



This is a rather strange assertion ; but 

 no more strange than true. It is to be un- 

 derstood that the Camellia is not hardy in 

 the middle states, although it withstands an 

 English winter. Our sun is so powerful in 

 winter, causing sudden thawing after frost, 

 that even a number of our native or natu- 

 ralized trees are frequently injured, even in 

 winters that we have considered moderate. 

 So mild was the winter of 1847-8, that we 

 might have supposed that it was impossible 

 for any hardy plant to have been injured ; 

 yet the common raspberry we grow here, 

 in some situations near the city, had the 

 half of the canes destroyed with the little 

 winter we had. 



Pimis pahistris grows well. Magnolia 

 grandiflora, and many other evergreens of 

 the southern states, grow well in Britain, 



