Camellia × williamsii 'Jury's Yellow'

Bred by Les Jury in New Plymouth, New Zealand, first flowered in 1971 and registered in 1976, 'Jury's Yellow' is the camellia that finally cracked the yellow code — or as close to it as Western breeders could get before the Chinese yellow species (C. nitidissima) made it out of botanical archives and into nursery hands. Les Jury was working only with white japonicas, and his theory was that he could coax the gold of the stamens to bleed into the petaloids at a flower's center. It worked. The result is an anemone-form bloom with nine clean white petals cupped around a thick boss of cream-yellow petaloids, the color of fresh butter rather than crayon yellow.

It is, technically speaking, less a yellow camellia than a white camellia with a yellow heart — and it remains the version with staying power. 'Gwenneth Morey' and 'Brushfield's Yellow' came out of Australia around the same time, but 'Jury's Yellow' is still on honors tables at the National Camellia Show in China nearly fifty years after registration. Among Les Jury's introductions, it was also one of the first to be self-grooming — meaning the spent blooms drop cleanly rather than turning to brown sludge on the bush, which sounds minor and is, in fact, the difference between a camellia that earns its place and one you politely ignore for nine months a year.

It carries itself with an upright, dense habit and dark glossy foliage — a plant that holds its shape without much intervention and reads beautifully in winter against pewter sky and bare-limbed trees. We've found it gracious in part shade, especially under the high canopy of pines or oaks, and it makes a forgiving anchor for woodland borders, courtyard plantings, or that particular gap beside a doorway that needs evergreen weight without volume.

For the gardener who already has the reds and pinks and is ready for the quieter, more deliberate end of the camellia palette.