Camellia japonica ‘Aspasia Macarthur’

Camellia japonica ‘Aspasia Macarthur’ is a hardy medium-sized informal double Camellia japonica, featuring a cream-white flower with carmine streaks, but also famed for its many sports due to genetic instability. It has become one of the most enduring, as well as the first significant, Australian raised camellia. It was developed by William Macarthur (1800-1882), the youngest son of John and Elizabeth Macarthur, who developed and selected it at Camden Park estate during the 1840s. William had originally named it as ‘Aspasia’, after the most famous woman of fifth century Athens, a consort to the statesman Pericles, and the cultivar was published in the Botanical Society of New South Wales Report of 1848.

Unbeknown to William, an Italian camellia grower by the name of Santarelli had already named a carmine pink camellia ‘Aspasia’, which had already appeared in European catalogues as early as 1840-4. Over a century later, in 1952, Professor E. G. Waterhouse, then a doyen of camellia culture, suggested that the Australian Aspasia be known as ‘Aspasia Macarthur’, and from then on the Macarthur name link was introduced.

Ref; The Macarthur Camellia Legacy, a talk by Stephen Utick; Chair of the International Camellia Society’s Committee for the Conservation of Historic Camellias to the The Horticultural Society of Canberra Inc. on 17 September 2017 https://hsoc.org.au/2019/05/03...

192.00 Location E7 number 10 on camellia photo 2 Latitude; -38.403092000000

00  Longitude; 146.053876000000