Editing Camellia (section)

=== Garden history ===
Camellias were cultivated in the gardens of China for centuries before they were seen in Europe. The German botanist [[Engelbert Kaempfer]] reported<ref>Kaemfer, ''Amoenitates exoticae'', 1712, noted by Alice M. Coats, ''Garden Shrubs and Their Histories'' (1964) 1992, ''s.v.'' "Camellia".</ref> that the "Japan Rose", as he called it, grew wild in woodland and hedgerow, but that many superior varieties had been selected for gardens. Europeans' earliest views of camellias must have been their representations in Chinese painted wallpapers, where they were often represented growing in porcelain pots.

The first living camellias seen in England were a single red and a single white, grown and flowered in his garden at [[Thorndon Hall]], Essex, by [[Robert Petre, 8th Baron Petre|Robert James, Lord Petre]], among the keenest gardeners of his generation, in 1739. His gardener [[James Gordon (botanist)|James Gordon]] was the first to introduce camellias to commerce, from the nurseries he established after Lord Petre's untimely death in 1743, at Mile End, Essex, near London.<ref>Coats (1964) 1992.</ref>

With the expansion of the [[British tea culture|tea trade]] in the later 18th century, new varieties began to be seen in England, imported through the [[British East India Company]]. The Company's John Slater was responsible for the first of the new camellias, double ones, in white and a striped red, imported in 1792. Further camellias imported in the East Indiamen were associated with the patrons whose gardeners grew them:  a double red for Sir Robert Preston in 1794 and the pale pink named "Lady Hume's Blush" for Amelia, the lady of [[Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Baronet|Sir Abraham Hume]] of [[Wormleybury]], Hertfordshire (1806). The camellia was imported from England to America in 1797 when [[John Stevens (inventor, born 1749)|Colonel John Stevens]] brought the flower as part of an effort to grow attractions within [[Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey|Elysian Fields]] in [[Hoboken, New Jersey|Hoboken]], [[New Jersey]].<ref name="Curtis' Botanical Magazine">The New York Botanical Garden, ''Curtis' Botanical Magazine, Volume X'' Bronx, New York: The New York Botanical Garden, 1797</ref> By 1819, twenty-five camellias had bloomed in England; that year the first monograph appeared, Samuel Curtis's, ''A Monograph on the Genus Camellia'', whose five handsome folio colored illustrations have usually been removed from the slender text and framed. Though they did not flower for over a decade, camellias that set seed rewarded their growers with a wealth of new varieties. By the 1840s, the camellia was at the height of its fashion as ''the'' luxury flower. The Parisian courtesan [[Marie Duplessis]], who died young in 1847, inspired Dumas' ''[[The Lady of the Camellias|La Dame aux camélias]]'' and Verdi's ''[[La Traviata]]''.

The fashionable imbricated formality of prized camellias was an element in their decline, replaced by the new hothouse [[orchid]]. Their revival after World War I as woodland shrubs for mild climates has been paralleled by the rise in popularity of ''[[Camellia sasanqua]]''.