My patchwork camellias

Sometimes just being beautiful is enough. These are Guillio Nuccio variegated camellias. The tree is practically pushing them through my sitting room window right now.

I used to have more than 150 camellias – and then the dreaded petal blight arrived in New Zealand. This is rather like brown rot on peaches – one small spot that grows and ruins them. There’s no cure. It’s spread by the wind-blown spores of a particular little toadstool that appears out of fallen camellia petals that aren’t cleared away.

Someone with a piece of squished-up infected petal in the sole of a shoe possibly walked it out onto kiwi soil from the USA. That’s all it would take. Hopefully no-one was stupid enough to flout the biosecurity rules and try smuggling fresh camellia flowers into the country. We’ll never know.