Episode 12: Camellia

On this month’s episode of Flowers & Folklore Sarah tells you all about the camellia.

You can find Flowers & Folklore on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, YouTube and lots of other places.

Hi, I'm Sarah.

Hi, I'm Keeley and you're listening to Flowers and Folklore. If you love flowers and folklore and odd floral facts, then you are in the right place.

Reading and learning about flowers, their history and folktales associated with them is a big hobby of ours. There's so many regional stories and lore for each flower. So you may have read or heard something different. You're absolutely welcome to get in touch and share the stories you know.

We'll share the best way to get in touch at the end of the episode. Welcome to the first episode of the year. We're so pleased you're here. You all absolutely loved Keeley's first episode. It was all about the hellebore and it's our most popular one to date.

Which is so lovely. And I'm so glad that everyone enjoyed listening to it as much as I enjoyed researching it and recording. It is certainly a fascinating little flower. So if you haven't actually had a listen yet, make sure you go and check out that episode.

Today, I'm going to be telling you all about the camellia. I'll probably talk about this later on in the episode, but it's pretty much the only plant that I've been able to grow in my horrible little garden. I'm in a tenement in Glasgow and it's just a really dark, dull,

like we get no sunlight in the garden and we've tried planting a few different things and we have a horrible little cat that lives on the ground floor and he will dig up all my plants. But for whatever reason, He's left the camellia alone and so it's actually growing. It makes me very happy.

That's so funny. I feel like that's almost a storybook ready to be made, a little cat that digs up all the plants.

That's cute. Yeah, that's a good idea. So the camellia is quite light on European folklore. This is often the case for plants and flowers that aren't native here, where, you know, in comparison to like the bluebell or something where It's quite a long history within Europe.

So we'll dive into some worldwide folklore and then a bit of the history of how it came to be in Europe and Australia. We're going to be focusing mostly on Camellia japonica. There's lots of varieties that have lots of different meanings. And this is one plant where you see that each different coloured flower has a different meaning.

So there really is so much associated with this plant. I'm British and we have a big connection with tea and tea comes from the leaves and the buds of the Camellia sinensis which is native to East Asia. There's loads of different varieties of sinensis as well as there being loads of

different ways that you can process the leaves and the buds to create different types of tea. This could be like an episode in itself so we'll leave that for another time but all the Camellias are part of the Theosia family, which is the tea family. I may have pronounced that incorrectly.

I know you said we're going to talk about this another time, but I just want to voice my surprise for the fact that the tea that I drink every day is camellia. That's blown my mind. I had no idea.

You know, it was one of those things where I don't think if you'd asked me, I could have told you. But then when I was reading, I was just like, oh, yeah, this sounds familiar. But doesn't it just go to show that the complete disconnect there is between seeing tea leaves and knowing what the plant looks like.

Yes, 100%. Yes, it's so fascinating. I do think it would be a really interesting episode to do, actually.

It would. The camellia is a flowering tree or shrub, and it's really beautiful and hardy. which has probably contributed to how popular it's become worldwide. The flowers in particular are easily damaged by frost, but you can keep them in pots and bring them indoors. I'm going to kick off the episode with five facts all about the Camellia.

Number one, the widespread cultivation of the Camellia Japonica can be traced back to the Song dynasty, which ruled from 960 to 1279. Number two, They've been known to grow up to 36 feet, which is 11 meters, which is just so big. That's huge. That's crazy. Number three, it's indigenous to China, despite its name,

and we are going to cover this shortly. Number four, it's appeared in paintings and porcelain in China since the 11th century. Number five is the state flower of Alabama. So we're going to kick off with some etymology. You may have heard the camellia referred to with many different names, but some of my favourite were Japan Rose,

which makes sense with the, you know, its proper name being Japonica. There was also Rose of Winter, which made me think back to Keeley's episode on the Hellebore. Yes, because that was called the Winter Rose.

It was one of its names.

So yeah. And then one of the other names that I saw was Zigzag, but I don't think that was used That's super cute. I don't think it's very common, but I just thought it was quite cute. It is cute. So the genus Camellia was named by George Camel, who was a missionary, a pharmacist and a naturalist.

And he is quite well known for producing comprehensive accounts of flora and fauna in the Philippines, as well as introducing the nature in the Philippines to Europe. The epithet japonica was given to the species by carlinus in 1753 and he he pops up all over

the place so i've definitely mentioned him on our on our podcast before he just seems to be he got around definitely heard of him before and i feel like we probably pronounce his last name differently every time we talk about him yeah i

read it as linius but that's how it that's how i hear it in my head linius yeah

that's probably right isn't it

No, well, when you said it, I thought, oh, that probably is right.

And so despite its name, Japonica, it is actually indigenous to China. The reason it got this name was because of Engelbert Kampfer, who was a German naturalist and explorer. He traveled to Japan, saw this variety of camellia growing there, and he gave a description of the plant to other educated Europeans. And so it just kind of stuck.

So I thought that was quite interesting that you look at it and just assume it's from Japan.

Yeah.

We'll get started with the Victorian language of flowers. There's loads of different meanings for the different colours. And in my go-to book, which is The Language of Flowers by Margaret Pixton, it's a handwritten book that's been photocopied to reproduce it. And it is my go-to, and I feel like it's normally really reliable.

But next to the red camellia... I couldn't properly read what she'd written. And it looks like love line, which I don't know if that has some kind of deeper meaning or if I'm misreading what it says. So my other go-to book is The Complete Language of Flowers, which is by S. Teresa Dietz. And for red,

she has written down the following, ardent love, in love, you're a flame in my heart. That's beautiful. It is, isn't it? And then for pink, We have desire and longing. For white, we have adoration, beauty, loveliness. For yellow, we also have longing. And then in Jessica Rue's book, Floriography,

she wrote that if you pair a camellia with a daffodil, it can show longing for an unrequited love. And then if you pair it with a zinnia, then you can give this as a gift to a friend who is moving away.

And I adore how niche and specific that is. That's amazing.

For other symbolism, there's often association with abundance, riches and prosperity. I got the impression that Europeans have just added their own meanings and borrowed here and there from China and Japan, which, you know, makes sense to They borrowed the plant from there, so... Why not add the stories?

I'm going to cover how the camellia came to Europe and Australia. In Europe, it arrived in the late 1730s. There was a good account in the Language of Flowers by Odessa Begay, and she wrote that in the late 1730s, English botanist Robert James Petrie, who had acquired a red camellia seed from an unknown source,

was recorded as the first person in Europe to cultivate the flower, which he did in his hothouse garden at Thorndon Hall in Essex. And then later in 1792, which is, you know, an even more specific date than what we know about Robert James Petra, there was, you know, the expanding trade of tea between Europe and China.

Two new varieties, the Alba Planner and Variegator, were introduced by Captain John Corner of the ship East India Merchantman, Carnatic, which is an absolute mouthful. But isn't it just fascinating that we know like the name of the ship that it came over as well as the different varieties.

Just amazing that they documented everything so explicitly. Yeah. And that they thought to do that back then.

Yeah, absolutely. And it just, it made me think of last week, Scott and I went down to Oxford to see an exhibition of that was all about Tom York, who is the lead singer from Radiohead. So it was about Tom York and an artist that he collaborates with throughout his whole career. It's called Stanley Donwood.

And I'm not particularly into Radiohead, but I went along and I was really struck by how many journals and sketchbooks and just little diaries, all these written accounts that they had from both Tom York and Stanley Donwood They had just captured so much detail that was then on display for people to see.

So Scott and I left the exhibition at different times. And the first thing we both did was go to the gift shop And buy a notebook so we could start recording down thoughts and feelings and things.

I love that. I love that you went and bought notebooks as well to start that for yourself. That's so beautiful. And I am a really big fan of pen and paper, absolutely. And I know that there has been studies... around how beneficial it is to, you know,

the sort of mind-body connection when you get out a pen and you write on paper, like they've definitely shown that that is really beneficial as opposed to just sitting down to write on a computer. However, it's funny that you bring this up because I was literally thinking the other day,

about this kind of tension that I think a lot of people are feeling right now where I keep reading the same thing where people are saying 2026 is the era, the age that we all go back to analogue. While I can see the appeal of that and I grew up in an analogue childhood, in an analogue world,

had nowhere near the amount of technology that we have today. I do think that there is some real beauty in what access we have today through technology, through things like social media, through our smartphones, to document on a regular basis, even if we are not being completely intentional or thinking that that's what we're doing.

But that is what we're doing. Every time we capture like a little memory or a little story about, you know, just something kind of mundane even, not even just the big moments, like when we share that to social media or we share that in a text message or an email – We'll just capture a photo of it.

We've documented these beautiful everyday moments and I think that's really quite special. And that's something we didn't have access to until this kind of technology. So it's just interesting that, yeah, just talking about documentation and, yeah.

Yeah, that's so true. And if I want to remind myself of what I was doing like three years ago, I just go through my camera roll and then you have the specific timestamp and you can Yeah, it's just quite an accurate way of recording history as well.

And everyone's doing that at the moment. There's a trend of what people were doing in 2016. So people seem to be going back 10 years and going, this is what I was doing in 2016, and they post like a carousel of photos, and this is what I was up to.

And they can do that because they have a smartphone that documents to the date, to the second, what they were up to. So it's quite fascinating.

We should do that on our Instagram page. So there's not a solid record of what happened to these two new varieties but it is believed that in the 1820s they were transported to the gardens at Chiswick House in West London and this was the residence of the 5th Duke of Devonshire.

That all may sound a bit familiar to listeners and people who read my substack, which is the foibles of a florist, because I love Chiswick because my grandparents used to live there. When my granddad worked at Kew Garden, they lived in a top attic flat in Chiswick.

And so whenever I go down to London, I always stay there. And I've been like so many times now, And every time I'm like, oh, I need to make an effort to go to Chiswick House. And I've still not been. So now I know that there's a lovely connection that I am gonna make an effort to go.

And then for all my Derbyshire pals, People will recognise that the Duke of Devonshire, that's the family that own Chatsworth House, which is one of my favourite places in Derbyshire. And I was there just before Christmas when they decorated it for the festive season. And it's just, it's absolutely stunning. And so I just, Yeah,

I really wanted to share about the history of how it arrived in Europe because I felt like there were so many good connections.

Yeah, and I can't believe you get to go to Chatsworth House just around Christmas time. Sarah sent me photos in WhatsApp about her beautiful visit and I was not jealous at all. It's totally fine.

One day we'll go together.

I'd love that.

The Duke had built a 300-foot glass greenhouse, which was not only the largest camellia conservatory in the world also held one of the largest camellia collections of the era wow that's huge yeah enormous and then from chiswick house website i pulled the following these plants

were in danger of being lost as the conservatory fell into ruin in the late 20th century three local members of the international camellia society stepped in to look after them today we look after 33 different varieties including examples of many of the earliest varieties introduced to Britain.

Isn't that incredible? They're still going.

Yeah, I love that. So the camellia really flourishes and takes off in popularity, particularly in the Victorian garden. And it was used to flavour tea as well. But it was still considered fairly exotic and it would have been expensive. So it was mainly kept by women whose households were able to afford

to maintain like a large garden outside. But I did see, again, in The Language of Flowers by Odessa Beguet, she noted that some people considered the camellia to be more beautiful than a rose, which I think is fair. Like it is such a beautiful flower.

And they would wear them in their hair or pinned onto dresses or even put them in bouquets, which just made me think I would love to make a flower crown out of camellias. Can you imagine?

That would be stunning. Absolutely stunning. I think you'd have a task on your hands with camellias because my experiences with camellias is you pick a bunch of them and you put them in a vase and you come back into the lounge room and they've kaplonked onto the table and they, you know, don't,

they don't hold themselves very well outside of there. So I would love to see it, but yeah, it'd be tough.

yeah that's very fair and just keep hold of that thought for for a moment and we might come back to it so then in terms of australia it seems that it came the camellia came over in 1826 um and this was by alexander mcclee i think of sydney which is a very scottish sounding name um

And the camellias were planted in Sydney at the Elizabeth Bay House. In 1852, Silas Sheetha created a well-known camellia nursery in Sydney, which was called Camellia Grove. I thought this was really beautiful. There was a record that I've pulled straight from Wikipedia that said, Camellia and other flowers from Sheetha's nursery were sent by steamship downriver

to florists at Sydney markets. tied in bunches and suspended from long pieces of wood which were hung up about the deck.

What a cool image.

Yeah. And isn't it just so wonderful to just have a record of the comings and goings of florists so many years ago?

Yes. And it just makes me think of the lengths that people go to to have flowers in their lives.

Yeah.

Even today, I mean, they've flown all over the world for people. It's just they're so desirable. Even back then we were finding ways to get them to people. Yeah. quite quite cool yeah that's yeah that's so true and yeah it just shows how much

importance we've always put on having flowers in the home and then there was just a final person in Australia who I wanted to mention there was a professor called Eben Gowery Waterhouse which is just an excellent name who was a scholar a linguist a garden designer and specifically a camellia expert and we definitely noticed a drop-off

both in Australia, it seems to be worldwide. And so he was noted as bringing a new interest back to camellias. And I just thought that that was fascinating that it's almost like fashions that go in trends. And so now in Sydney, there is the EG Waterhouse National Camellia Garden. which we should go and visit.

I'll come to Australia. We can go and visit.

Yes, definitely. Add it to the list.

So we've obviously talked about it being used for tea, various other things that you can extract from it. So oil is extracted from its seeds, which have been used to wash and moisturise the hair and body. And then in South China, it is used quite commonly as a cooking oil. And then my...

favorite use is camellia oil that is used to clean and protect the blades of cutting instruments like I use it regularly to clean my secateurs but you can buy like a almost like a stone that's called a clean mate and you use that with the oil

and you scrub away at your tools and honestly it's fantastic and it's non-toxic it's odorless and it's tasteless And genuinely, like, my tools look so good. The plant has also been used in traditional medicine. So I saw records of it being used in anti-inflammatory medicines. We're finally going to dive into a bit of folklore.

I absolutely loved researching this. It is really interesting. It's Japanese folklore. So I apologize in advance for pronunciation. The old camellia spirit. which is known in Japanese as Furu Tsubatsuki no Rei, is a yokai which is said to inhabit and develop from old camellia trees.

The yokai is a diverse class of supernatural entities and this covers spirits and monsters and loads of different things that are all part of Japanese folklore and they are often representing aspects of human emotions. So there was a Japanese folklorist, Toriyami Sakien, who was a scholar, a poet, and born in 1712.

According to him, these spirits dwell in old camellia trees. Their purpose was mostly to fool and trick people. It would often be that the spirit residing in the tree would resemble a beautiful woman. And there was quite a few different variations of the story. But a lot of them would centre around a beautiful woman.

So it was meant to be a beautiful plant and a beautiful woman. And there would be trickery afoot. So sometimes the spirit would entice people because of its beauty. But there was also tales where it would be them trying to garner sympathy. So they would either be crying or it would be quite mournful.

And that would be the way it would draw people in. It was also believed that the spirit would cry at night. It would be a warning that something ominous would occur in the future. I wasn't able to see whether this was set in stone or whether if they heard this call,

then they were able to avoid something bad happening. So I couldn't see if it was like a warning story or if it was just, this is an omen and something bad is gonna happen. And then the spirit would appear as this young, beautiful woman usually dressed in kimono.

And then Wikipedia noted that the real appearance was said to resemble a grotesque tree with red disfigured heads growing out of its trunk. There seems to be many origin stories for the Furu Sopatsky no re. I honestly found Wikipedia to be the most accessible source for reading about this.

So according to Wikipedia, one story tells of a great tree that looked past over a village well hidden inside the forest. The tree grew beautiful flowers alongside those around it for many decades. One day, a young man found the tree and plucked one of its flowers due to its magnificent beauty. Since then,

women and men from the village sought out its flower to use as ornaments and decoration. As more and more people took from the tree, the tree started to wither until one spring it was left to wither away. After the constant abuse, the tree felt rage and with its new emotion started to grow more beautiful flowers.

Again, another villager saw out the beautiful flower from the tree and was found lifeless near the flower bed around the tree after a few days. The death was a mystery until a couple from a different village visited the tree for its flower, although only the woman came back screaming and yelling at the villagers that her

lover was taken by a ghost. Since then, any individual who ventured out into the forest who dared to take the tree's flower and survived would say that a beautiful woman would be near the tree. And honestly, a good story, like a good warning, like don't abuse plants.

Yes, it's quite chilling.

I mean, yeah, that too.

I'm sitting here in my cabin. It's like dark and it's rainy and like it's just me. It's quite creepy.

And it did make me think like about how important, like the importance of foraging sustainably because I know across the UK like plenty of florists will forage and I do it you know when it's appropriate but a lot of people who don't understand plants and trees and flowers might do the same and there's a park quite

close to where I live that used to have quite a lot of ivy growing And then because it's become quite popular over the years to make your own wreath, there are some holly bushes that now are just no longer in existence because people have just chopped them to the point where they can't recover. Yeah.

And so I honestly think it's a really important lesson to take on board from this story.

Yeah, absolutely.

Not that you're going to get haunted. Well... So on the website yoke.com, it is a database of illustrated Japanese folklore. I found that alongside Wikipedia as a really helpful resource for putting this part of the episode together. And the illustrations are absolutely beautiful. So we'll include some over on our Instagram. You can go and have a look.

Keeley, do you want to describe this picture?

I'll do my best. So there's a beautiful woman walking in front of a, well standing, but it looks like she's got movement to her, in front of a camellia tree with red camellias and lots of beautiful green foliage. She is holding a camellia and she's wearing one in her hair and her tunic or kimono

is also embroidered with camellias. And she's looking quite, I don't know, she's got sort of almost like a cheeky look on her face. Like she's hiding something.

Yeah, there is definitely a sense of mystery about her. There was also another tale where there was a woman who breathed onto a man who was walking by the tree and then he turned into a bee. And I just thought it was, it was quite a sinister tale as well.

But I just thought it was quite interesting that he transformed her to something else. So We will link out to the website so you can have a look at all the different tales that are available. And during my research, I kept coming back to it being a symbol of good luck, particularly in China.

So there was associations alongside the lily that camellias would be used to like honour various gods for creating prosperity. And then there was a lot of connections with Chinese New Year as well. And I thought it was quite interesting that when you see like really well-established, like pictures of well-established camellia bushes,

there is a sense of abundance about them. And I think that it makes sense that there's like this sense of prosperity.

Yes, that's so true. They are one of those flower bushes that just is, it's just overwhelmingly beautiful with the number of flowers it produces at one time.

Gives the idea of flourishing. going to take a bit of a darker turn and do you remember earlier keeley when you said that the heads seem to fall off quite easily yes now i'm scared because it seems quite dramatic that they don't lose petals it's just the whole head that

drops which is quite different to other plants whereas if you think of a rose It will fall petal by petal. And so I kept coming across references to camellias being like associated with noble death. Right. And so there was like repetition of the theme of the heading.

And it seems to be that camellias were associated with warriors or samurai being... murdered by having their head cut off because this reflects the way a camellia's flower will fall off the plant it's like its entire head is being removed from the

bush and then falling to the ground i am never going to look at a camellia in the same way again i know isn't it fascinating that you know red camellias like at the start we talked about how it's like love and like burning desire and like really romantic And then there's also this underlying current of

them also being associated with death and warriors.

It's like Nasturtian. They did that to us too, remember? It's like this pretty little flower and then it's like gore and warriors and blood and it's like, wait, you're a flower. Yes.

I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, I love that. I love it when there's, yeah, all these different meanings that, you know, sometimes take a darker turn. I also saw references that because of this, you know, Japanese folklore, that associated it with spirits and trickery and now death,

that it was actually recommended that you don't give camellias as a gift to someone who was an inpatient or in hospital because of this like darker meaning.

Good advice.

I mean, I don't agree. They're so beautiful that I will accept the bad connotations as well.

That's so funny. We're so, so different. I'm like, that's it. I'm never having them again.

And the camellia was a really interesting flower in terms of seeing how much the meaning associated with it has really fluctuated over time, as well as how it's come in and out of fashion and how it just seems to have made an impact worldwide, I guess.

And so I wanted to talk about the ties of the camellia with the suffrage movement in New Zealand. So in the early 1890s, Kate Shepard led the movement along with Women's Christian Temperance Union and other women's franchise leagues so she led the suffrage movement within New Zealand

but she was actually born in Liverpool and lived in Scotland before moving to New Zealand so I just thought that was a nice a nice connection so I pulled from JSTOR a journal about Kate Shepard and the connection with camellias, so it said the following. Kate's passion for justice and humanitarian principles was accompanied by a love

for white camellias. they became a symbol of womanly excellence in her campaign for the women's vote. She personally presented those members of the House of Representatives who supported the electoral reform with a white camellia bloom of Camellia japonica, Alba Plenna, a famous white formal double camellia brought from China to Britain in 1792,

and by then one of the most popular camellias in Victoria Gardens.

Is that our old mate from the before?

Yep.

Oh, there you go. See, that's much nicer than warrior death. You know, it's excellent.

But yeah, isn't it fascinating that, yeah, these varieties that were brought over to Britain then had like a second life over in New Zealand.

I love that.

Beautiful. Yeah. And then... I am quite a petty person and so this really tickled me right according to some accounts and I don't know how factually correct this was but I did see quite a few references to this those who voted against the petition you know to not allow women

to have the vote received a red camellia and I thought that was quite fun that yeah that um I mean, I suppose we think a red community is really pretty, but I think it just kind of made them stand out as on the wrong side.

Yes, it does sound a bit bleak when we've just learned about it being with death as well. So instead of it being red for love, it's like red for blood. Revenge. Yes, yes.

And so I would just like to take a moment to say that when I was looking into this movement, I came across a Maori campaigner for women's suffrage called Meri Tei Tai Manga Kahaya. And I really hope I've pronounced that right. Me and Keeley tried to work it out.

And so we will include her name in the show notes. So there is a record of her within this episode. She was maybe not well documented within history. And so I feel like it's important that we just take a moment to recognise that often voices from different communities and cultures can be

erased and she delivered a speech that was called so women can get the vote and she delivered this to the Maori parliament and she was the first woman known to have done so and so she requested that women be allowed to vote within the Maori

parliament and also sit as members but the matter lapsed and it seems that she has long been overlooked but was actually A really powerful woman within her community. But when I was trying to find a copy of her speech, I kept finding like broken hyperlinks.

And it just it honestly took me quite a while to find her speech. Maybe if you're over in New Zealand, you have much easier access to it. But I found even on the New Zealand government website that there was a broken link.

so i have i found the speech and will include we'll include it in the show notes so you can go and read it for yourselves but i just wanted to take a moment to mention that often within you know women's movements for the vote there's integral women

who get left out so on the 19th of september in 1893 New Zealand women won the right to vote in elections. As a result, New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to extend this right to all women. Suffrage Day celebrates the aims of the movement for gender equality and is a

reminder of the ongoing issue of equality for women.

That's incredible that New Zealand was the first.

I had no idea. Yeah, I didn't either. And so, yeah, this was a really fascinating rabbit hole to go down. And I don't want to take us too deep into that rabbit hole and say we'll include some links in the show notes because I kept coming across the term the battle of the camellias.

And there was even one note of it being called the battle of the buttonholes, which I feel like it kind of reduces the importance of everything that happened. Makes it sound more masculine as well.

It's like, it's more like. It does. You know what I mean? It's taking it away from something feminine, like a flower. Yes. So just reducing it to something on a suit or, you know, like.

Yeah, definitely. I think now we know that the power the camellia has and like all the, you know, the associations with death and everything else, I think we can appreciate that a camellia isn't just a pretty flower. But yes, it does kind of just, yeah, imply, make it sound a bit lesser. It did make me think of,

this is maybe me making it also sound a bit daft as well, but when I was reading about it, it just kept making me think of Mary Poppins because obviously the mother in the story does her song about mrs banks yes she does her songs about votes for women but the battle of the

buttonholes made me think of how important wearing it's the red carnation wasn't it at the bank that mr banks worked at that gets taken from him um and it it was very interesting that um in america they call buttonholes boutonaires whereas obviously in the uk and New Zealand, they call them buttonholes.

Yes, we call them buttonholes here too.

Yeah. And so there has been a few ways that the New Zealand Parliament has commended women's suffrage. So there is a white camellia cultivar, which is named after Kate Shepard. It was created by Camellia Glen Nurseries to mark the centenary of women's suffrage in New Zealand. And it is apparently planted extensively throughout

New Zealand so I don't know if we have any listeners in New Zealand but if we do please show us some photos of it because I would absolutely love to see that. There's also various artworks including sculptural flowers that are on the walls of the chamber.

I couldn't find whether they were camellias or not but I imagine they would be tied in somewhere. To celebrate 130 years artist Vanessa Smith was commissioned to draw a really beautiful camellia that was to represent the importance and significance of the milestone. Keeley, do you want to describe it?

It's on a royal purple background and the camellia has just one leaf and the camellia flower itself is absolutely abundant with petals. It's a line drawing and it has lines upon lines upon lines of petals. It's quite striking.

And so there's a significance to how many petals. Vanessa Smith noted that there are 130 petals in the hand-drawn camellia, which is one for each year. And each hand-drawn element represents the raw emotional charge spirit of the movement that still resonates 130 years later.

That's really beautiful.

I was really keen to share about that part of history and how camellias have been used to represent this really important movement because it just reminded me of how the symbolism is constantly changing and how flowers can take on new meanings over time. And it's very much a living and shifting thing.

And it took me back to Snowdrops, which was one of the first episodes that I did before Keeley joined us and how there was a lot of connotations with um death to start with for snowdrops and then there was it became associated with hope and new beginnings and then more recently it was used as the snowdrop campaign

which was when something really horrific happened in Scotland and I won't go into details just um but if you want to go and have a listen I think it's really worthwhile or if you go and research it but it just made me think how it just adds this importance to flowers because they offer

Yeah, just a chance to symbolise things that we maybe sometimes aren't able to put into words.

And isn't that incredible that they're these little multifaceted creatures that have so many stories to tell? I love how you said that. It's a living and shifting thing. It's really beautiful.

And I have pulled out two pictures of the owlbird planner, which is the one we mentioned right at the start and then was used during the women's suffrage movement in New Zealand. And then I've also got a picture of the Kate Shepard one. Do you want to describe them, Keeley?

The albaplena, it's whiter. It's a very snow white flower. The petals right in the middle have almost a creamy yellow to them, right in the centre. And the petals are almost uniform and splay out one after another, almost very particularly spiralled. In comparison, I guess I'm looking at them in comparison to each other.

So the Kate Shepherd is, again, very white, but I'd say it almost looks more like a gardenia. Its petals are a little bit more sugar-looking. They look a little bit more like they've been touched and moulded rather than just particularly smooth and perfectly spiralled out. It has a little bit of a larger yellow pollen centre.

They're both really beautiful, but I'd say one looks more... organic and the other one looks almost more scientific if that makes sense yeah

that's absolutely spot on and the Kate Shepard one like it does feel looser and more organic and it really gives me like garden rose or peony vibes like a single peony um yeah it's really beautiful but the Alba Plenna one like I would say it is It looks more perfect somehow.

And it looks very similar to the Chanel brand. So we're going to take a quick tour into the world of fashion. As I mentioned earlier, camellias were used in fashion to attach, to be like pinned onto your clothes or to be pinned into women's hair. And Coco Chanel was very, very taken by the Camellia.

And there's been a lot of speculation as to how and when she fell in love with it. But there is the famous novel by Alexandra Dumas, which is La Dame or Camellia, which obviously, you know, should be in a lovely French accent. But there is speculation that this is how Chanel fell in love with the Camellia from

reading this because then the novel was adapted to be on the stage. It became really quite popular. So, you know, there was a real popularity around Camellias. But from the very beginning of the Chanel brand, like Camellias have been like an integral part of it. So from their website,

because I had a little nosy and it made me think of the first time I bought a bottle of perfume. And this was when Scott and I, I think this was maybe our first or second holiday together, and we went to Paris, and this was a very long time ago,

and I went to one of the Chanel stores and bought a bottle of Misa perfume, and it is like this special edition one, and it smells like, imagine if you were going to the opera in the 1920s, and you had like a red velvet bag, and you opened it up,

and you got out your powder to powder your cheeks. That is what this perfume smells like. It smells like theater and posh old ladies. And it's my favorite perfume in the world. But there's this picture of me holding the bag like an absolute tourist.

I'm holding my gift bag that's got the perfume in and right on the front of the bag is a white camellia and it is just part of their packaging. And I took the camellia off and I put it in my junk journal and it will be somewhere in the flat still,

but I probably should have found it before this episode. But at the time I just thought it was a rose. Like I didn't know enough about the house of Chanel to know that it was a camellia. And so it does seem to still be an integral part of the brand. Um, in their 25, 26 collection,

you can buy Camellia brooches and they will set you back about a thousand pounds. So yeah, I mean, just, just go and go and buy a plant and just get a real one instead. Um, but from the Chanel website, um, it reads the story of Chanel and the Camellia began in 1913.

The day Mademoiselle pinned one of the white blooms to her belt. The flower's simplicity, shape, purity, and vitality, it's not afraid to blossom in winter, seduced her. She made the camellia more than her favorite flower. She made it a symbol. And then I know this is just like fancy marketing and just, you know, clever storytelling,

but there is now a range of skincare by Chanel that uses camellias because apparently they're really hydrating and I thought it was quite interesting that we did see historically that camellias like the oil from camellias was used in hair care and like moisturizing the body and so it's almost

kind of come yeah full circle and so I thought it was quite interesting that this was the flower that was chosen by Chanel and because it one of the main reasons that it was picked and that she liked to wear it

on her clothes or in her hair was because it didn't have a scent and so then it wouldn't compete with the perfume that she was already wearing and then there's no thorns like a rose so it wouldn't damage any of her clothes. I wonder how much is elaborated for the storytelling of like the Brant's mythology

but Karl Lagerfeld was credited with bringing the camellia back into modern Chanel and, you know, on the runway and in designs. Within art and literature, we do see the Camellia show its beautiful face every now and then. So from Floriography, which is written by Jessica Rue, she wrote,

the Camellia's meaning originates with the 1848 Alexandre Dumas novel La Dame aux Camellias. which tells the tragic love story of a man Duval, a young bourgeois, and Marguerite Gaultier, a courtesan. And this is obviously, this is like the beginning for the European understanding of flowers.

But over in China and Japan, obviously the meaning of camellias began much, much, much earlier. And so this This novel is really the beginning of quite a significant impact, I guess, of Camellias. It was first published in 1848, but then it was adapted by the author for the stage.

And then it first ran in Paris in 1852, and it was just an instant success. And so it honestly went down a rabbit hole of just like how much this one novel inspired so many different things across the world really. There is 20 different motion pictures, there's opera, theatre, film,

like it's just inspired so many pieces of art. Moulin Rouge, which is actually Scott's favourite film, it was inspired by this book. And then there's ballets and novels that have been inspired by it. Like it's just really seems to have taken like the art world for a storm. Yeah, incredible, isn't it? It's supposedly semi-autobiographical.

And then Marguerite is nicknamed La Dame or Camellias, which is French for the lady of Camellias because she wears a red camellia when she's menstruating. And that means she's unavailable for sex. And then she wears a white Camelia when she's available to her lovers. Yeah, which is just a whole other layer of meaning.

And then I think it's very interesting then to kind of see that in contrast for it being a symbol for a political movement as well.

Yeah, wow. So interesting.

In the Language of Flowers, which is written by Odessa Begay, and I've referenced her writing quite a lot during this episode because she had... a really good section on camellias. She had a section on Proust's camellia and I'm going to be honest, I've not read anything by Proust and I don't intend to.

But this does tie into how we were talking about buttonholes earlier on. Between 1890 and 1920, Marcel Proust often wore a camellia pinned to his lapel. And this was supposedly a sign of refinement, which, I mean, makes sense. Like, bring back buttonholes. I do think they make you look refined. His former housekeeper, Celeste Alvarez, wrote a biography,

Monsieur Proust, in which she recounted that he himself referred to this era as his camellia buttonhole period.

That's so cute.

I love it.

He was in his camellia buttonhole era. Mm-hmm.

And camellias are frequently mentioned in his classic novel, In Search of Lost Time. I mean, I wouldn't know because I've not read it. We don't often get to shout out historical female artists. And so I came across someone called Clara Pope and she was born in 1767 and died in 1838.

She was a British painter and botanical artist. And so, Keeley, would you like to describe her painting?

Yeah, it's really beautiful. The background colour is almost like aged paper and it's a cluster of red and white camellias that are kind of bunched together loosely. And I'd say the white camellia looks more open and more organic, similar to the Kate Shepard we were describing earlier. And the red are...

almost more closed um rather than being quite as full and open it's really

beautiful there's a second painting of hers which we'll include in the show notes but keeley i'll give you a break and i won't make you describe it so that can be a surprise for if you head over to our instagram which is at flowers and folklore podcast you will be able to see

this the second piece of artwork that I've pulled out it's really pretty and then I thought it was only fair seeing as so much of the meaning and the law actually originates from Japan the artist Utagawa Hiroshige was a Japanese artist who was considered the last great master of his tradition which was creating prints from

Japanese wood blocks so he was born in 1797 and and died in 1858, he often incorporated camellias into his landscapes. And I've pulled out one that's called the Camellia and Bird. And would you like to describe it, Keeley?

Yeah, it's on that aged paper background again, and it's using tones of blue, so sort of a deeper blue with a teal blue, and there's just one branch of camellia that the bird is resting on, and it looks like it's about to maybe drink water or something from the camellia, or it's very interested in the camellia,

an open camellia. It's quite lovely, and it has Japanese writing on it as well.

Yeah, it's really beautiful, isn't it? And I saw his work being described as tranquil and I think I definitely get that from this.

Yeah, it is tranquil.

And we have spoken throughout the episode how camellias can be quite fragile and it's not something that I commonly work with. What about you, Keeley?

Have you ever worked with it? Just in my garden where I get irritated at it. But what's the point of being so beautiful if I can't work with you? So, yes. Not really. We have been using camellia leaves in work like buttonholes and in Victorian posies. So wiring camellia leaves to create little Victorian posies and buttonholes and

things like that.

Yeah, I think the only, it's maybe been a handful of times when I've used it, but I've used it as a foliage rather than a flower. But I did pull from A Year in Flowers, which is by Erin Benzakeen. and she wrote that the vase life is five to ten days harvest when flower buds are

just opening and then for harvest for the foliage harvest when leaves are leathery and stems are firm and it is a woody flower um but yeah it is it feels like um almost like out of reach like so beautiful but like hard it's not something I ever see the wholesalers.

It's not something that's commonly used, but it's just so beautiful.

Well, I have to say you have really opened my eyes to the camellia. And I will admit that when you started talking about warrior deaths, I decided that camellias were dead to me. And then you started talking about how they were so prominent in a really important political movement like women's suffrage.

And then I thought, okay, I've made my mind up too quickly. You've judged them too soon. And I think it just is such a beautiful illustration of what you were saying earlier, that flowers have such a rich history that's a living history that's constantly changing. So thank you, everyone, so much for listening.

We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we've enjoyed talking it through. If you have some interesting folklore about the camellia, we would absolutely love to hear it. You can find us over on Instagram at flowersandfolklorepodcast or on Substack at flowersandfolklore.substack.com. And you can also reach out to us via email at flowersandfolklorepodcast@gmail.com.

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Welcome to the first episode of 2022. We are so happy you're here. No.

We've just travelled back in time. Four years, guys. Don't try that stuff like it.