Area 6 – Notes.

Area 6 was a departure from all the preceding areas in that it was based on something other than area of origin, namely flower form, specifically formal doubles. Several of the varieties here are not formal doubles and I wonder how they came to be included. There is also a surfeit of formal double pinks that all look pretty much the same.

‘April Rose’ (6-001) is a recent variety that if this is correct, looks old fashioned. The description is “rose red formal double”

‘Arciduchessa Augusta’ (6-002) is a variety that in the right conditions turns purplish, normally it is a dark red.

‘Duc de Bretagne’ (6-024) was labelled ‘Pink Perfection’, which is a synonym for ‘Otome’, which this is not. It appears to be identical to ‘Duc de Bretagne’ (6-007) and has been relabelled accordingly.

‘Elisabeth’ (6-009) is white and doesn’t require the “white form” part of the name. It produces the odd fleck of pink on some flowers.

‘Latifolia’ (6-010) This was labelled ‘Fanny Bolis’, the register description of which is “flesh white, striped and spotted red”, so this was something else. The name ‘Fanny Bolis’ has been applied to ‘Latifolia’ which is what this looks like.

‘Pollyanna’ (6-022) This should have formal double flowers with 70 petals. I think it may be under-performing due to being a small plant amongst huge old ones so getting far too little light. It should be spelled ‘Pollyanna’, with two l’s, which it isn’t in the Camellia register, but is in the New Zealand camellia register. It was raised by Les Jury in New Zealand so is probably a x williamsii.

‘Roza Harrison’/‘Sea Foam’ (6-025). The register lists a japonica ‘Sea Foam’ and a x williamsii ‘Sea Foam’. The former is an American raised formal double, the latter an English semi-double. From its leaf this looks like a japonica but the flower form is wrong for it to be ‘Sea Foam’.
‘Sea Foam’ is marked on the oldest map I have seen, but on a more recent one seems to have been replaced by ‘Roza Harrison’. There is a plant of ‘Roza Harrison’ in Area 2 which is similar but not quite the same. I am still inclined to think that is what this is, the difference being accounted for by growing conditions, so I have relabelled it accordingly.

‘Ville de Nantes’ (6-031) is a white blotched virus variegated variety, effectively a fimbriated form of ‘Masayoshi’, and this appears to be the pure red ‘Ville de Nantes Red’, though with much smaller flowers than the specimen at (1M-054). In 2015 it had a shoot coming out low down with red flowers the petals of which were neither fimbriated or twisted, which would be yet another sport, ‘Eugene Bolen’.

(6-016) was labelled ‘Mme. de Strekaloff’ but doesn’t match the description of that variety. It is the same as (5A-058), (5A-059) and (5B-027), all of which were labelled ‘Trionfo di Lodi’ but don’t match the description of that variety either.