Camellia japonica 'Anacostia'

The United States National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. sits on 446 acres of rolling ground above the Anacostia River, a place where serious horticultural work has gone on quietly for the better part of a century. Camellia japonica 'Anacostia' takes both the name and the pedigree from that institution, selected at the Arboretum for cold hardiness and reliable performance at the northern edge of camellia country.

Camellias reached the Western world in the eighteenth century, carried from China and Japan by plant hunters who knew at once they were looking at something extraordinary. In Asia the plants had been cultivated for well over a thousand years, as ornamentals, as the source of tea and camellia oil, and as subjects of poetry and painting, and by the time they reached Europe and the American South they had already been refined into thousands of named forms. 'Anacostia' marks a distinctly American chapter of that long story, a selection made not for the mild winters of Kyushu or the Azores but for the colder, more demanding conditions of the mid-Atlantic and upper South.

The flowers are deep red, semi-double to formal in arrangement, dense and layered enough to look almost architectural in the winter garden. They open from late winter into early spring, at the precise moment the garden most needs them, set against dark, glossy evergreen leaves that earn their place through the rest of the year without asking for attention. This is a camellia bred over centuries to do exactly one thing well, and the plant shows it.

Photos courtesy of the JC Raulston Arboretum and Scott A.