The Burden Museum and Gardens in partnership with the Baton Rouge Camellia Society held the grand opening of the Florence and Charles Crowder Camellia Collection at the LSU Rural Life Museum on Sunday following the 46th Annual Camellia Show.
Resident director and professor Jeff Kuehny said the Baton Rouge Camellia Society hosts a show once a year to judge camellia blooms that contestants bring in from their yards. They also have a camellia sale featuring plants that contestants breed themselves.

Kuehny said Florence and Charles Crowder are long time members of the Baton Rouge Camellia Society and have worked to preserve the older camellia variety.
“What Florence has done in her life is she was collecting camellias that were known to be in the United States before the 1800s,” Kuehny said. “A lot of them were lost, and she couldn’t find them anymore, so she’s been traveling around the world looking for them. Out of the 400 and some registered at that time, she’s found over half of them. That’s the collection that we are building here.”
Kuehny said both amateur and occupational breeders around the world have been breeding camellias since the early 1600s. Many camellias originated in Asian countries, such as Japan and China, and were brought to Europe, he said.
Member and former president of the Baton Rouge Camellia Society Gerald Phares said there are more than 50,000 different types of camellias, but the ones at the show are those that are more adapted to the Louisiana climate. New hybrids appear all the time, Phares said.
“People that grow them will have what’s called a sport, which is a new variety [of camellias] that comes,” Phares said. “They are completely different, so they have the choice of naming it. Many [at the show] were developed in Baton Rouge and were named here.”
Kuehny said there’s a whole process of getting a prospect camellia registered in the registry. People can send in their camellia if they feel it should be registered, and they get a register with a name on it. Kuehny said the new breed is approved by a committee and added to the camellia registry. He said these camellias often become popular in the nursery trade.
Phares said the Baton Rouge Camellia Society helps to preserve and create camellias in several ways, such as teaching people how to grow camellias that they want in their own yards.
“It’s a great hobby,” Phares said. “You’re able to help people. We have a group that meets here at Burden every Wednesday, and we make cuttings and put it in perlite and grow it.”
Phares, who has more than 300 camellias himself, said his favorite one is the “La Peppermint.”
“It’s a species, and it has three different kinds of blooms,” Phares said. “One is white with red stripes, pink with red stripes or a completely red flower. It has two different ones. That’s one that I find most interesting. It’s a tradition of the south. Many older homes have had these.”