Stewartia

Stewartia - Though these beautiful shrubs flower at a time when the shrub garden is past its best, they are seldom planted. The flowers, like a large single Camellia, are beautiful and abundant. They need no care beyond mulching in light soils and during dry seasons, and the removal at intervals of weak and exhausted wood. The most vigorous kind is the Japanese S. Pseudocamellia, and it is also the finest in its autumn tints. Though far less vigorous and hardy, the flowers of S. virginica, with their contrast of white and crimson, are chastely beautiful, and S. pentagyna is also worth growing. Peat soil is often recommended for these, but is not necessary in gardens of good free loam or alluvial grit, and they will even flower well in some poor soils. A damp place and a moist atmosphere are favourable, as is proved by the fine growth of Stewartias in a wet season, and the fact that they invariably choose stream-sides and wet places in their own land. Increase is difficult and the young plants of slow growth. The lower branches may be layered, or cuttings of the nearly ripe wood, taken with a heel towards the end of summer, and plunged in sandy soil under a bell-glass, will slowly root.

There are five species of Stewartia, but only three are in cultivation.

Stewartia Pictures

Stewartia malacodendron L. - silky camellia

Stewartia ovata (Cav.) Weatherby - mountain camellia

Related Flowers

Shell Flower

Shell Flower (Stewartia Pentagyna) - The best of the American kinds, reaching a height of 15 to 20 feet, and freely branched from the base upwards. The flowers are fragrant, 3 to 4 inches across, creamy-white with yellow anthers, coming in July and August for about three weeks. In all stages the flowers are beautiful, almost translucent in their purity, tinged with pink upon the outside while in bud, and finely fringed at the edges. The leaves are oval, 5 to 6 inches long, rounded at the base, and finely toothed.

Stewartia Pseudocamellia

Stewartia Pseudocamellia - A lovely flowering tree from the mountains of Japan, where it reaches a height of 50 feet. The white flowers are 2 to 3 inches across, with a tuft of yellow anthers, but they look smaller than this because they remain half-closed like an Abutilon, and never open flat as in other Stewartias. The leaves are thick like those of a Camellia, smooth, bright green with often a reddish tinge, and finely colored with gold and crimson in the autumn. Syn., S. japonica.

Stewartia Virginica

Stewartia Virginica - From the warmer states of N. America, where it grows in swamps, on river banks, and in shady places. At its best it is one of the most beautiful of flowering shrubs, though more sensitive to cold and never so vigorous as the other kinds, rarely exceeding 10 feet in height, and with a looser habit of growth. In this kind the flowers are finest of all but less abundant, measuring 4 inches across, with pure white shell-like petals, sometimes more or less streaked with crimson towards the base, and with red stamens in the centre.

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