Camellia sasanqua (Christmas camellia)

Native to southern Japan, specifically on Kyushu, Yaku-sima and the islands south to the Liu Kiu Islands.

Camellia sasanqua forms a large evergreen shrub or small tree, with slender branches, and can reach 6 m tall. The leaves are dark green, leathery, elliptic-ovate, toothed at the margins, 3–7 cm long and 1–3 cm wide. The flowers are white, pink or red and appear from September to December. They measure 4–7 cm across, with narrow, sometimes lobed petals. The fruit is a capsule approximately 2 cm across and contains 2–5 seeds.

  Illustration of Camellia sasanqua (1939) by Stella Ross-Craig (1939), taken from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Image: RBG Kew)

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Editor: Martyn Rix) provides an international forum of particular interest to botanists and horticulturists, plant ecologists and those with a special interest in botanical illustration.

Now well over two hundred years old, the Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants. Each four-part volume contains 24 plant portraits reproduced from watercolour originals by leading international botanical artists. Detailed but accessible articles combine horticultural and botanical information, history, conservation and economic uses of the plants described.

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Christmas camellia is grown as an ornamental. The leaves can be used to make tea, and the seeds produce an oil which can be used for lighting, lubrication and cooking. It has also been used in scalp preparations. A substance called Ch'da tsaiping, used in Hong Kong for poisoning fish, was reported in 1888 in the Bulletin of Miscellaneous Botanical Information (which continued later as the Kew Bulletin) as being derived from the residual seed cake of Camellia sasanqua after the seed oil had been extracted. Its affect on fish is due to the presence of a glucoside. More recently, C. sasanqua has found a use in aquaculture for the control of unwanted predatory fish in water courses.

Camellia sasanqua is grown in gardens in southern Japan, China, the warmer parts of the USA and much of Europe. In Britain, it does well in the mild maritime climate of Cornwall. In less clement areas, it is often grown against a warm wall or as a conservatory plant.

Camellia sasanqua has been used to produce many cultivars with single or double flowers in shades of pink and red. Propagation is by seed or cuttings.

Camellia sasanqua cultivars ‘Azumakagami' and 'Blanchette', can be seen in the Arboretum at Kew (between Victoria Gate and the Marianne North Gallery) and at Wakehurst. Camellia sasanqua ‘Peach Blossom’ can be seen in the Woodland Garden and near the Temple of Arethusa at Kew.

Alcohol-preserved specimens are held in Kew’s Herbarium, where they are available to researchers from around the world, by appointment. The details of one of these specimens can be seen on-line in the Herbarium Catalogue.

Kew’s Economic Botany Collection has collections of the seeds and wood of Camellia sasanqua, and a sample of the seed cake from Hong Kong used for poisoning fish.

Illustration of Camellia sasanqua by Stella Ross-Craig (Image: RBG Kew)

The illustration in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine is by the artist Stella Ross-Craig (1907-2006), who worked on both this journal and for Hooker’s Icones at Kew. In 1999 she was awarded the Kew Medal (for outstanding contributions to the work of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Wakehurst). Her magnum opus, however, was Drawings of British Plants, which illustrated all the British flowering plants (excluding grasses and sedges) and consisted of 1306 plates. It was published in parts between 1948 and 1973 and reissued in 8 volumes in 1978. Her husband, Robert Sealy, also worked at Kew, and wrote a monograph, A Revision of the Genus Camellia, published in 1958.

Search Kew's databases for more information on this species

Royal Horticultural Society Rhododendron, Camellia and Magnolia Group

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Wiley-Blackwell)