My choice for plant of the month for February is biased towards my 1st anniversary since travelling to Chuxiong, China and attending the ICS congress.
The trip covered several criteria the first to attend the ICS congress, the second to receive the ICS camellia garden of excellence award and the third was to follow in the footsteps of the great plant hunter George Forrest.
In achieving the 3rd part I travelled throughout Yunnan on the exact same route as George took in the early 1900’s. Visiting the same villages and seeing camellia Forrest’s where he would have collected seed.
Some of his seed collections came here to trewithen and the legacy of that is this month’s plant of the month.
Camellia reticulata (wild form) naturalised at Trewithen from seed George collected.
My trip completed, full circle, the story of our camellias growing from seed he collected from the wild, sent back to England, propagated and grown on at trewithen to mature, flower an set seed. I have seen all stages in the garden and now native in China.
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