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. Sasanlcwa is a 

 quite small, frail shrub, thi-owing 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. I give mine any rich soil, peaty or no, and trust 



