Camellia

A cultivar is a kind of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and which retains those traits when propagated. Methods used to propagate cultivars include division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture, or carefully controlled seed production. Most cultivars arise from deliberate human manipulation, but some originate from wild plants that have distinctive characteristics. Cultivar names are chosen according to rules of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP), and not all cultivated plants qualify as cultivars. Horticulturists generally believe the word cultivar was coined as a term meaning "cultivated variety".

Popular ornamental plants like roses, camellias, daffodils, rhododendrons, and azaleas are commonly cultivars produced by breeding and selection or as sports, for floral colour or size, plant form, or other desirable characteristics. Similarly, the world's agricultural food crops are almost exclusively cultivars that have been selected for characters such as improved yield, flavour, and resistance to disease. Since the advent of genetic engineering in the 1970s and the rise of its application in crop breeding in the 1980s, very few wild plants are used as commercial food sources. Trees used in forestry are also special selections grown for their enhanced quality and yield of timber, for example American timber company Weyerhaeuser is the leading grower of genetically modified Douglas-fir trees, one of the most commonly harvested trees.

Nectar is a viscous, sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats. Nectar is an economically important substance as it is the sugar source for honey.

Nectar is also useful in agriculture and horticulture because the adult stages of some predatory insects feed on nectar. For example, a number of predacious or parasitoid wasps (e.g., the social wasp species Apoica flavissima) rely on nectar as a primary food source. In turn, these wasps then hunt agricultural pest insects as food for their young.

Camellia japonica, known as common camellia, or Japanese camellia, is a species of flowering plant from the genus Camellia in the tea family Theaceae. It is native to China and Japan, and grows naturally in forests at altitudes of around 300–1,100 metres (980–3,600 ft).

There are thousands of cultivars of C. japonica, with many colors and forms of flowers, mainly as garden ornamental plants. The floriculture of Camellia japonica started in China. Its widespread cultivation can be traced back to the Song Dynasty, when 15 varieties of Camellia japonica were recorded in literature.

Camellia sasanqua, with common name sasanqua camellia, is a species of Camellia native to southern Japan (Kyushu, Ryukyu Islands and Shikoku). It is usually found growing up to an altitude of 900 m (3,000 ft).

Growing to 5 m (16 ft) tall, this evergreen shrub has leaves that are broad and elliptic, 3–7 centimetres (1.2–2.8 in) long and 1.2–3 centimetres (0.5–1.2 in) broad, with finely serrated margins. The flowers are 5–7 centimetres (2.0–2.8 in) in diameter, with 5 to 8 white to dark pink petals.

Camellia oleifera, which originated in China, is notable as an important source of edible oil (known as tea oil or camellia oil) obtained from its seeds. It is commonly known as the oil-seed camellia or tea oil camellia, though to a lesser extent other species of camellia are used in oil production too.

It is widely distributed in China and is cultivated extensively there. It is found in forests, thickets, banks of streams and foothills at elevations of 500 to 1,300 metres.

Toshima (利島村, Toshima-mura) is a village located in Ōshima Subprefecture, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. The village comprises the whole of Toshima Island.

The island, at 4.12 square kilometres (1.59 square miles), is one of the smallest inhabited islands in the Izu Island chain. Approximately 330 people live on the island. Eighty per cent of the island is covered by camellia forests. From November to March, much of the island is red from the camellia flowers. The island is also home to the Saku lily (Lilium auratum var. platyphyllum), the largest lily in the world.

Camellia taliensis (also known as Yunnan large leaf varietal tea, wild tea, Dali tea, Yunnan broad tea, Fried egg plant and others; 大理茶) is a small species of evergreen shrub whose leaves and leaf buds are used to produce tea.

It is of the genus Camellia of flowering plants in the family Theaceae.

The Ericales are a large and diverse order of flowering plants in the asterid group of the eudicots. Well-known and economically important members of this order include tea and ornamental camellias, persimmon, ebony, blueberry, cranberry, lingonberry, huckleberry, kiwifruit, Brazil nut, argan, sapote, azaleas and rhododendrons, heather, heath, impatiens, phlox, Jacob's ladder, primroses, cyclamens, shea, sapodilla, pouterias, and trumpet pitchers.

The order includes 22 families, according to the APG IV system of classification.