Tag Archives: Camellia sasanqua Crimson King

‘Autumn is icumen in’

It is not ‘sumer’ that is icumen in here, but very much autumn that has announced its arrival.

It seems a lifetime since I studied English literature at university. I guess it is almost a lifetime ago and I have long since lost my ability to read texts such as Chaucer’s tales and ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ in their original Middle English. But how have I reached this age without ever knowing about the farting billy goat in ‘Sumer is icumen in’? (see below) I only found it this morning when I looked up the lyrics. It is perhaps a sign of times that were more bawdy than vulgar.

‘Icumen in’ does not translate to ‘is coming in’. It means it is here and nothing makes that seem more real than the end of daylight saving. I used to find the onset of autumn somewhat depressing, describing myself as a summer bunny. But now that I garden, it heralds the start of a new season with all the freshness of new season flowers.

Nerine sarniensis season! This is one of Mark’s hybrids – the long stems mean it would probably be better grown as a cut flower than a garden plant. The weight of the head can drag the stems down but we don’t do cut flowers so we just persevere with it in the garden.

In our climate, it also heralds the time when we can get back to planting, digging and dividing and renovating parts of the garden that are crying out for more drastic action. We still have up to two months of the growing season left here; the ground doesn’t get cold enough to stop plant growth until June. Indeed, for those people who live in areas with hotter, dry summers, autumn planting is often a much better option than spring planting because the plants can settle in and get their roots out before the stress of summer conditions sets in. Spring planting is the better option for those who live with harsher climates where the ground can freeze or is waterlogged and very cold in winter but most of our country can happily plant away in autumn,  safe in the knowledge that that the plants will over-winter and leap into new growth in springtime.

Autumn is the second season for the rockery. While there is always something of interest flowering 52 weeks of the year, autumn and early spring are when it bursts with colour and variety. Nerines feature large, particularly the sarniensis hybrids.

Most of our nerines are hybrids from both Felix and Mark’s efforts. We once named and sold a few but nowadays they mostly just exist in our garden. Every year, my camera fails to capture the truly startling shade of highlighter pink in this clump.

Felix started with a few named ones from Exbury. This is ‘Inchmery Elizabeth’ and has proven to be such a pretty and reliable performer down the decades.

I found this one snapped off, which may have been due to slug chomping on the stem or it may have been Ralph the dog who is no respecter of gardens but ploughs in when pursuing a fly, bee or wasp. What I think is interesting is the shade of purple it is fading to; presumably there are enough blue genes in there to indicate it is only a matter of time and determination by somebody to get to true purple and blue hybrids in the future.

Camellia sasanqua ‘Elfin Rose’

Autumn is sasanqua camellia season. This is sweet little ‘Elfin Rose’, which we cloud prune. Sasanquas don’t have to be white, as per the long-running fashion in this country.

Camellia sasanqua ‘Sparkling Burgundy’

The flower on ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ is not so very different to ‘Elfin Rose’ but the habit of growth is. This plant is decades old, maybe 50 years or so. We lifted it and thinned the canopy to turn it into a graceful, open small tree rather than a bushy shrub.

Camellia sasanqua ‘Crimson King’

Sasanqua camellias have softer flower forms and laxer growth than the more common japonica and hybrid camellias that flower in winter and spring but they don’t get petal camellia and we have grown to appreciate their relaxed informality of flower form. Alas that is a wasp feeding on the flower above but they are equally a source of food for the more desirable bees. Exposed stamens and pollen are the key to feeding bees.

The lyrics to ‘Summer is icumen in’, courtesy of Wikipedia. Composed, it seems, to be sung as a round. Spot the farting billy goat (and the politer alternative).

Middle English
Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu
Groweþ sed
and bloweþ med
and springþ þe wde nu
Sing cuccu

Awe bleteþ after lomb
lhouþ after calue cu
Bulluc sterteþ
bucke uerteþ
murie sing cuccu

Cuccu cuccu
Wel singes þu cuccu
ne swik þu nauer nu

Sing cuccu nu • Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu • Sing cuccu nu		Modern English
Summer[a] has arrived,
Loudly sing, cuckoo!
The seed is growing
And the meadow is blooming,
And the wood is coming into leaf now,
Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe is bleating after her lamb,
The cow is lowing after her calf;
The bullock is prancing,
The billy-goat farting, [or “The stag cavorting”]
Sing merrily, cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo,
You sing well, cuckoo,
Never stop now.

Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo;
Sing, cuckoo; sing, cuckoo, now!
What is there not to love about Cyclamen hederafolium. First the pretty, dainty blooms and then the lovely marbled foliage to carry through winter.
A flower lay I prepared earlier, showing the various hues of nerines in the rockery at the time

The autumn camellias

Camellia sasanqua Crimson King in prime position

When Mark returned home to Tikorangi in 1980 bringing me and our first baby bump, the name Jury was synonymous with camellias. These days Jury = magnolias, but not back then. There is a whole chapter in the family history that is headed ‘Camellias’ but it is largely in the past now. Changing fashion, changing focus and the dreaded camellia petal blight has seen to that.

But every autumn, as the sasanquas come into flower we both derive huge delight, particularly from the Camellia Crimson King by the old mill wheel, which is just out from our back door beside the driveway. It is a picture of grace and charm.

Crimson King rests more on its merits of form and position than the beauty of individual blooms

Sasanquas are the unsung heroes of the camellia family, seen mostly as hedging plants, so utility rather than glorious. But if they are allowed to mature as specimens and gently shaped down the years, they stand on their own merits. Mark declared yesterday that it is the autumn flowering camellias that interest him now, not the late winter and spring varieties. For these autumn ones do not get petal blight whereas the later varieties are now a mere shadow of their former selves, faced by the extreme ravages wrought upon their blooms by blight. Our camellia trip to China in 2016 had us concluding that our mild, humid climate with high rainfall means that we suffer worse from petal blight in Taranaki than pretty much anywhere else, really. It is nowhere near as bad in dry climates.

The history of camellias from the middle of last century onwards has some parallels to the history of tulips – all about show and showy blooms. So it was predicated on the quest for the new – extending the boundaries of flower form, size and colour, prizing breakthroughs even when the results were more novelty than meritorious. Camellia societies had enormous flower shows where the staging of individual show blooms was the focus. It didn’t have much, if anything, to do with garden performance let alone longevity as garden plants. Sasanquas didn’t fit this show bench mould. They flowered too early in the season, individual blooms are often quite small, lacking rigid, defined form and falling apart when picked.

But fashions and conditions change and these days it is the softer look of the Japanese camellia family member, the sasanquas, that makes us stop and take notice more than the later flowering japonicas and hybrids on which the earlier family reputation was forged. The light airiness and grace of the sasanquas fits our style of gardening far better than the solid, chunkiness of many of the later varieties and the autumn flowers serve as another marker of the change of season.

The earliest of the sasanquas here – all named varieties

I did a walk around to see how many different blooms I could pick but it is still a little early in the season and some have yet to open. Some plants we leave entirely to their own devices, some we will clean up the canopy from time to time -to take out dead wood and create an umbrella effect, two we clip tightly once a year to a cloud pruned form. With their small leaves, the sasanquas clip well. It just pays to do it soon after they have made their new growth after flowering. Leave it until late spring and you will be clipping off all the flower buds set for next autumn.

Camellia Mine No Yuki

It takes a few decades of growth to get sufficient size to shape as we shape ‘Elfin Rose’ and ‘Mine No Yuki’ but these specimens now function as distinctive shapes within the garden all year round, rather than melding into the background as most camellias do when not in bloom.