Conradina verticillata Fred Heutte the camellia was exhibited in

the camellia was exhibited in Nagasaki in 1973 and carried to America by Nuccio's Nursery in 1975

sunny corners of a garden

swinging from deep cobalt to soft mauve depending on how much aluminum a plant can draw up

long cultivated in Japan and known only in this dress

since the thorns are formidable

Conradina verticillata Fred Heutte the camellia was exhibited inA small shrub of the Cumberland Plateau, found only on the flood scoured cobble and sand bars of three river systems in eastern Tennessee and a sliver of Kentucky: the Big South Fork of the Cumberland, the Caney Fork, and the Obed. The rest of the Conradina clan keeps to the sand scrub of Florida and the Gulf Coast of Alabama, sun baked and semitropical. This species took a different path, north into the cooler uplands, and the cold hardiness that