OF SHRUBS, MOSTLY EVERGREEN 35 
protected in the open through two winters, is really an 
indoor plant—the most gorgeous, perhaps, of all solitary- 
flowered shrubs; its broad, loosely built blooms being 
larger, lovelier, richer, and more graceful, to my taste, 
than those of even the largest, loveliest, richest Rose. 
Its intense gentle carmine has a quality of luminosity 
that I know in no other floral red, to the same degree ; 
it seems to light up a room with its presence, and glows 
like the steady heart of a fire. Even as the Rose is less 
stodgy than the horrid, fat Camellias that Marguerite 
Gauthier affected, even so are the blooms of reticulata 
less stodgy than the regularity of the typical double Rose. 
The Camellia’s one lack is fragrance ; otherwise its glory, 
its tossing profusion of petal, its revealed core of golden 
foam, make it the successful rival of any Rose that ever 
bloomed. 
The only scented Camellia is C. Thea—more famous 
as the tea-plant. This is practically hopeless, I think, 
for outdoor culture. I have gathered it at Nagasaki, as 
a semi-established wild plant, drooping its sweet, delicate 
bells modestly beneath those dark-green leaves to which 
the world owes so incalculable a debt of health and 
happiness. But for our gardens Camellia japonica and 
Camellia Sasankwa stand pre-eminent. Sasankwa is a 
quite small, frail shrub, throwing up one slender bough 
to five feet or so. In autumn, these boughs are bent 
beneath the weight, along their course, of many large 
flowers, in shape and size and colour exactly those of 
Rosa canina, but having the artificial, waxy texture of 
all the Camellias. But Sasankwa is an uncertain plant 
in England, and has given much disappointment. Of an 
imported batch all will start by thriving—then, sud- 
denly, ninety-nine will obstinately, inexplicably die, 
while the hundredth goes on prospering like a bay 
tree. JI give mine any rich soil, peaty or no, and trust 
