Camellia Capital

By Tierney R. O’Donnell

Back At It

I’m so happy to be returning to my blog after injuring my back in November! Rest and idleness are not comfortable spaces for me and I participate in them begrudgingly. While I missed writing about Sacramento history during my recuperation, I also felt some trepidation returning to it. I’m not a professional historian. I don’t hold any degrees in history. I’m just someone who loves learning more about the place I live.

While researching camellias for my December blog, I found a quote that helped soothe some of my imposter syndrome:

…history…is truly a great subject—the foundation of all other disciplines. Broadly speaking it is everything that ever has been thought, said, or done. The problem is that the capture of such a definition poses an impossible goal…Fugitive materials, poor memories, inaccurate documents, false witnessing, erroneous assumptions and, sometimes ulterior motives, all combine to make it a job like exploring a cave without a flashlight. Despite the obstacles the task presents its very presence challenges one to attempt it. He who assays the job can take some refuge in the fact that while the complete answer never may be found, truth is brought closer to those who knock at its door.

—F. Melvyn Lawson, Introduction to Flower Power: The Story of the Sacramento Camellia Festival. ¹

I love knocking at the door of the South Side neighborhood’s history. Like a cave with many branching tunnels and caverns, each subject I research leads to a myriad others. There is always more to explore. Shall we strap on our helmets, pull out our flashlights, and go spelunking?

A Flame in the Darkness

It’s been cold and dark in Sacramento. More so than usual. According to the National Weather Service, we even set a record this year with 22 consecutive days of unbroken cloud cover.² By 3:00 in the afternoon the light is already fading into dull twilight. The leaves have fallen from the trees, leaving bare branches like veins silhouetted against the gray sky. Everything feels fallow and slumbering, hunkered down against winter’s chill. Everything that is, except the camellia.

“…On seeing them, the first impression is of fire. A brilliant brocade merging with the clouds, the sun melting into the rosy sky over the southern city.”

The Imperially Commissioned Compendium of Literature and Illustrations, Ancient and Modern by Jiang Tingxi (1726). ³

In the yards and parks of the South Side neighborhood and throughout the city of Sacramento, while everything else is going to sleep, the camellia is waking up. When I open my bedroom curtains each morning, I’m delighted by the sight of the camellia trees bursting into bloom outside. Their pale pink blooms make me smile even as I stumble to turn up the heater, pull on additional sweaters, and dodge the cats milling around my ankles complaining of the cold and the criminal slowness of breakfast. The camellias seem immune to the cold and the chaos. They glow under the softbox lighting of the cloudy sky. When their time comes to an end, without resentment or concern, they gently fall to earth like pink clouds. With their grace and ease the camellias reminds me to slow down, to soften, and to rest. Their leaves, evergreen, pulse with life even when everything else feels dead. In the midst of winter, the camellia creates its own spring.

Camellia’s Family Tree

Plant taxonomy and classification are not my strong suit. So, to make things more interesting, I’ll tell the story of the camellia fairy tale style.

Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Plantae (Plants), there lived a Family named Theaceae (Tea Family). Within the Tea Family was the wise and noble Genus Camellia. The Camellia were blessed with many beautiful daughters. Over 200 in fact! These daughters came in many forms. Some were full, buxom shrubs. Others were tall, graceful trees. Their daughter Camellia sinensis was blessed with the gift of brewing delicious, fragrant teas. Her long, narrow leaves crinkled like a mouth much given to smiling. Her sister Camellia sasanqua was known for her distinctive musky perfume that wafted throughout the palace. Despite her willowy stature, sasanqua had an adventurous spirit and was known to climb the palace walls and fences. Their other sister Camellia oleifera was not adventurous, preferring to remain in the palace kitchens pressing precious seed oils to use in cooking and mixing beauty products.

Of all the Camellia’s beautiful daughters, the sweetest and fairest was named Camellia japonica. She was known for weaving resplendent robes of flowers in many forms, sizes and colors. Her beauty inspired artists and writers to fashion her likeness in paint and porcelain and poetry. It is her story we tell today.

There, wasn’t that more fun than a list or a chart? Ok, very well. I see some of you still want your chart. Here’s one from John Threlkeld’s The Camellia Book (1964):

The Camellia japonica is the most popular species of camellia. Like the overachieving favorite child that she is, her “flowers come in a wider variety of colors than do those of any other group of camellias, ranging from the chalkiest white through blush, all shades of pink, and rose, to red and variegations of these colors in differing patterns.”⁵ Not only does Camellia japonica have the largest variation in bloom color, she also has the longest blooming season. Her varieties flower over a period of at least six months, ranging from late fall to late spring.⁶ As if these weren’t accomplishments enough, Camellia japonica is also known for the superior glossiness of her leaves which gleam as if she’s been up all night polishing and waxing them.⁷

Origins of the Camellia

Camellias are native to China and have been cultivated there since at least the 5th century.⁸ While it’s impossible to know exactly where the camellia first appeared, “it is believed that its home was in the mainland Chinese province of Yunnan, close to the Himalayan spine of the Asian continent.”⁹ From the foot of the cloud-crowned Himalayas the camellia found a natural home across Southeast Asia from Taiwan to Korea all the way to Japan.¹⁰

One of the first written references to the camellia is from A Book of Flowers and Trees by the Prince of Wei, attributed to Thopa Xin and written sometime between 480 and 535.¹¹ In the text, the camellia is likened to a Sea Pomegranate (Hai Shiliu) because its red flower resembles the pomegranate flower (Shi liu).¹² The adjective “sea” (Hai) was included in the name because it was “a common way to refer to an object coming from afar (‘overseas’)” and “the original habitats of the camellia were at the fringes of Chinese territory and consciousness.”¹³

In Chinese art and poetry, the camellia came to represent the passage of the seasons and the transient nature of life.¹⁴ In his poem “A spring day in a mountain pavilion” (“Shan Ting Chun Ri“) Jiang Zong (519-594) mentions the camellia while contemplating the brief and fleeting nature of time:

I have had just five days of leave
During which I perched up on a hillside.
An ancient quince crosses the nearby gully
A precarious rock towers in front of the island.
The bank is green with fresh river willow
The pool shines red with reflected camellias
Wild flowers peacefully wait out the end of the month
How can mountain insects be aware there is an autumn?
Can humans retrace their lives at all?
A night candle cannot keep going forever.¹⁵

In his monograph Compendium of Camellias (Cha hua pu) published in China in 1719, Pu Jingzi writes that when the camellia flower is “fully open, it is as though there are freshly dyed bundles of coloured raw silk in the branches.”¹⁶ I love this simile. It reminds me of the camellia trees that bloom outside my bedroom window. Though, with all the rain lately, their silks are a bit soggy. In China, the camellia’s blooms have been depicted in various mediums including scrolls, inlaid boxes, and porcelain.¹⁷

The Japanese word for camellia is tsubaki. It’s etymology is thought to derive either from Atsu-ba-ki (“thick-leaf tree”) or Tsuya-ba-ki (“glossy-leaf tree”).²⁰ In the gardens of Kyoto, there are Camellia japonicas which are “estimated to be more than four centuries old. Some have trunks over forty inches in diameter and grow 25 to 30 feet in height and width.”²¹

In Japan, the camellia’s associations take on a more martial cast. The flower is mentioned in the Nihongi (also called The Chronicles of Japan) the second-oldest book of classical Japanese history, published in the year 720. Book VII of the Nihongi chronicles the exploits of the 12th legendary emperor, Emperor Keikō Tennō. When the Emperor came to the village of Hayami, the village chieftain told him a nearby mountain cavern was the home of outlaws called Tsuchi-gumo (literally “earth spider” or “earth hiders”) who would hinder the Emperor’s journey.²² To defeat the Tsuchi-gumo, Emperor Keikō Tennō “gathered camellia trees, and made of them mallets for weapons”²³ which he gave to his bravest soldiers. The soldiers slew the entire band of Tsuchi-gumo until the blood of the outlaws flowed ankle-deep. ²⁴ Thereafter, the place the camellia mallets were made was known as Tsubaki-no-ichi (“camellia market”).²⁵

In another work of Japanese literature, the Man’yōshū, camellias represent the emperor himself. The Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) is the oldest extant collection of poetry in Classical Japanese, compiled sometime after 759. In one of the poems, the vital life force of the camellia represents the divine nature of the emperor.

“Growing broad-leafed sacred true camelia, [sic] its leaves are broad, its flowers are shining. Present the abundant rice wine to the honorable child of the high-shining sun.” (Kojiki, kayō poem 57)²⁶

As we will see later when they came to Sacramento, the camellia’s popularity waxed and waned over time in Japan. The camellia was taken up by the samurai in the 12th century²⁷ and later had a moment during the Edo period (1603-1867) when the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada (1579-1632) was really into camellias so all his daimyo (feudal lords) wanted to be into them too.²⁸ To curry his favor, the daimyo would bring the shogun unusual specimens of camellia for his collection.²⁹ This led to a camellia boom which coincided with the arrival of movable type technology from Korea and led to the creation of dozens of books and illustrated guides featuring camellias.³⁰ One of these botanical art books was the Somoku Shasei Shunju no Maki illustrated by Shigetaka Kano (1657-1699). Even though it was illustrated over 300 years ago, the blooms in the Somoku Shasei Shunju no Maki look just like ones I’ve seen around the South Side neighborhood. One of the trees in our front yard produces flowers with the exact same creamy mix of pink and white that always makes me think of strawberry swirl ice cream. Camellias continued to be a popular motif in Japanese art from scrolls to woodblock prints to ceramics.

Falling with Style

Besides their variety of colors and long blooming period, Camellia japonica’s flowers have another unique feature. Most plants lose their flowers one petal at a time and then drop the calyx, the green outer part at the base of the flower. Not so our unique Camellia japonica. When it’s time for the camellia’s flowers to fall, both the petals and the cradling calyx drop together as one. This unique method of abscission (the natural detachment of parts of a plant) has suggested different meanings to the various cultures living where camellias bloom.

In China, the green calyx symbolizes the supportive and protective male energy while the petals symbolize the delicate and beautiful female energy. Because the calyx and petals fall together, like lovers who cannot bear to be parted, camellias represent enduring love and devotion.³⁵

In Japan, the camellia’s ability to bloom despite winter’s harsh conditions symbolized perseverance and strength.³⁶ The way the blossoms fall, with both calyx and petals together, was “evocative of samurai values, such as honor, bravery, integrity, and loyalty.”³⁷ There is also a possible association between the way the camellia’s flowers fall and the beheading that was part of the samurai ritualistic suicide tradition called seppuku. The flowers fall whole to the ground like a head severed from the neck. I have to admit, the yard does look a bit like a floral battlefield after the camellias have been falling for a while.

Camellias Arrive in Sacramento

Over time, camellias travelled from their native lands in Southeast Asia across western Europe and eventually to the United States. The camellia’s arrival in Sacramento is credited to one man, nurseryman and florist Colonel James Lloyd Lafayette Franklin Warren who founded the New England Seed Store at 15 Jay Street, later renamed 115 J Street, in 1852.³⁸ Warren took out an ad in the February 7, 1852 issue of the Sacramento Union newspaper to announce:

“We have received a superb collection of rare varieties of Camellia Japonica [sic] from the most celebrated growers in Europe. This truly magnificent plant is unsurpassed in loveliness. Ere long it will be acclimated with us, to form our pride as an ornamental tree.”³⁹

If you’re visiting Old Sacramento, there’s a plaque⁴⁰ at the former location of the store commemorating the introduction of the camellia to the city.

In 1853-54, Warren issued a catalogue, listed as the first horticultural publication in California, which called attention to its “new Camellia House, where all the new and rare kinds can now be seen.”⁴² The camellia received a shoutout in October 1860 when the Sacramento Bee extolled the plant’s virtues as an excellent ornamental tree for local gardens. According to the paper, gardeners should plant their camellias “under clusters of…large trees”⁴³ to protect them from Sacramento’s burning summer sun. There must be something to it because the camellias in our yard flourish happily under the shade of surrounding walnut and beech trees. Sadly, many of Sacramento’s early camellia plantings were lost in the floods of 1861-1862.⁴⁴

Just as people today make pilgrimages to visit the black walnut tree on T Street, early Sacramentans sojourned to visit especially fine camellia trees. Judge Peter J. Shields (1862-1962) recalled how the “gentry around the early [18]80’s would drive their buggies and phaetons on Sundays and on afternoons and early evenings just to see”⁴⁵ a particularly beautiful camellia tree. The judge also recalled “a fashionable dancing club giving a camellia dance annually”⁴⁶ for which the blooms were in great demand.

As we saw earlier in Japan, the fashion for camellias waxed and waned in Sacramento. In the early 19th century the camellia “was the aristocrat among hothouse flowers” and had “elbowed the Orange well nigh out of the orangery and had taken possession of men’s minds and hearts.”⁴⁷ But, by the end of the 19th century, the camellia had declined in popularity. Fashions changed, other flowers came to prominence “and the Camellia quietly left the stage (or the glasshouse), its head still held high, but by most persons forgotten.”⁴⁸

Camellia Days Are Here Again

In 1910, Mayor Alexander E. Goddard ran a campaign to make Sacramento “The Camellia City.”⁴⁹ (Sacramento has had so many names throughout the years: The City of the Plain, Levee City, City of Trees. Why not add one more?) At first, the idea didn’t catch on. It was further hindered by a street-renaming study commissioned by the city that ended up removing “Camellia” from the names of multiple streets, lanes, and avenues.⁵⁰ It wasn’t until the 1920s and the advent of the annual Camellia Show that the camellia regained her place in the popular imagination.⁵¹

The idea to create an annual Camellia Show was put forth on February 24, 1925 at a membership dinner of the Sacramento City Chamber of Commerce.⁵² In its early years, the show was run by the Tuesday Club, then the Sacramento Garden Club which was formed, in part, for the purpose of organizing the camellia show.⁵³

The show was scheduled in March each year “and as a result of its steady increase in size the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium became the scene of its annual presentation.”⁵⁴ Advertisements touting Sacramento as The Camellia City often quoted Mayor Goddard who had tried to promote the flower back in 1910.

While official efforts were being made to elevate the camellia via annual shows, one Sacramento man apparently was making headroads all by himself. A political cartoon appeared in the Legislative News section of the Sacramento Bee on January 14, 1925. It depicted Frank N. Killam, Superintendent of the Capitol Building and Grounds, with a large, chibi-like head handing a camellia to a woman with a Louise Brookes flapper hairdo. The caption reads: “No wonder the camellias around the Capitol are as scarce as hens teeth—Supt. of Capitol Buildings and Grounds, Frank N. Killam the handsome young bachelor sees to it that every young female attache [sic] gets her daily camellia.”⁵⁶ Unfortunately, this was a long time before workplace harassment prevention and the #MeToo movement. Even if it’s just giving someone a flower, don’t hit on people at work y’all. It’s not fair. They work there and can’t escape. Also, don’t pick public flowers. If we all picked them, there’d be no flowers left to enjoy. Killam just couldn’t seem to keep himself out of trouble. He appeared in the paper again in 1925 in connection with an apricot pie-eating scandal.⁵⁷ I’ll leave you to make up in your own mind whatever jokes you please about that.

Sacramento’s love affair with camellias grew through the 1930s and 1940s. In 1943, the Sacramento Camellia Society was founded to present the annual show and to “prompt and encourage the planting of camellias throughout the city; help with camellia problems; increase knowledge of camellia culture; assist the national (camellia) society in clearing up confusion in camellia names; and perpetuate the name Camellia City.”⁵⁹ The annual show became known as the Camellia Festival and featured events such as a camellia flower show, a fashion show, a camellia queen contest, a ball, an art exhibit, and a children’s parade.⁶⁰

The camellia had long been considered the unofficial flower of the city and county of Sacramento. In 1961, Sacramento made it official by passing Ordinance No. 2269, designating the camellia as the city’s flower.⁶² Nothing says “I love you” like city code.

Camellia Coffee

Including “camellia” in the names of places and things is another way Sacramento has honored its connection with this beautiful plant over the years. We’ve had the Camellia Band, Camellia Park, Camellia Acres, and of course the Camellia Festival. One of the latest institutions to carry on this tradition is Camellia Coffee Roasters.⁶³ During these wet winter days, my husband and I love to sit inside their cozy brick building listening to the rain thunder against the metal roof overhead. I love how the soft pink and vibrant red of their branding echoes the colors of the camellia flowers we’ve walked past on our way to get there. Their logo is a camellia blossom depicted in the swoops and interlocking circles of a mandala, an echo of the camellia’s symbolism of life’s cyclical nature and the impermanence of time.

Living Monuments

As we move into this new year, I resolve to look out my window each day and appreciate the camellias dancing on their branches. With her hundreds of varieties, the Camellia japonica celebrates the infinite possibilities that present themselves to us each day. They have incredible names like Night Rider, Drama Girl, Pink Perfection, Butterfly Wings, Black Lace, Tomorrow’s Dawn, Buttons and Bows, Desire, and Quintessence. Their colors range from bright white to deep crimson and everything in between.

The camellia gently holds all the past, the present, and the future in her delicate folds. Her legacy stretches back into deep time, born across the globe and cherished for thousands of years. She blooms in the gardens of the South Side, having survived flood and neglect and resurgence. And when I am no longer here to look at her, she will be blooming still.

I leave you with the words of an unnamed camellia lover from one hundred years ago musing on the legacy of the plants they had nurtured:

“…and when I passed on I would have the inward satisfaction of knowing that here in the Camellia City I had left hundreds of living monuments—to cheer and adorn and beautify through the years to come.”⁶⁵

May we all have such a beautiful and enduring legacy. Happy New Year!

Bibliography

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53. Arrington, Debbie. “Sacramento celebrates favorite flower at 100th Camellia Show.” Sacramento Digs Gardening, February 26, 2024. https://sacdigsgardening.californialocal.com/article/101414-camellia-show-100th/. ↩︎
54. Lawson, F. Melvyn. Flower Power: The Story of the Sacramento Camellia Festival. Sacramento Camellia Festival Association, 1989. ↩︎
55. “Sacramento The Camellia City.” The Sacramento Bee. January 30, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sacramento-bee/188016325/. ↩︎
56. Buel, A. V. “Under the Dome.” The Sacramento Bee. January 14, 1925. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sacramento-bee/188013402/. ↩︎
57. Evans, Dorothy. “Stafford Hurls Angry Defi.” The Sacramento Union. August 22, 1925. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sacramento-union/188015652/. ↩︎
58. Buel, A. V. “Under the Dome.” The Sacramento Bee. January 14, 1925. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sacramento-bee/188013402/. ↩︎
59. Lawson, F. Melvyn. Flower Power: The Story of the Sacramento Camellia Festival. Sacramento Camellia Festival Association, 1989. ↩︎
60. Lawson, F. Melvyn. Flower Power: The Story of the Sacramento Camellia Festival. Sacramento Camellia Festival Association, 1989. ↩︎
61. Sacramento Camellia Festival Association. “Fourteenth Annual Camellia Festival.” Sacramento Public Library, Sacramento Room. Sacramento Ephemera Collection, EC-COM-b02f02i01. https://sacroom.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15248coll3/id/8448/rec/47. ↩︎
62. “Ordinance No. 2269.” The Sacramento Bee. February 21, 1961. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sacramento-union/187294147/. ↩︎
63. Camellia Coffee Roasters. “Home.” Accessed January 3, 2026. https://camelliacoffeeroasters.com/. ↩︎
64. Camellia Coffee Roasters. “Home.” Accessed January 3, 2026. https://camelliacoffeeroasters.com/.  ↩︎
65. “Camellia season.” The Sacramento Union. December 15, 1925. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sacramento-union/188012869/. ↩︎