Camellia Coloring Pages

Flowers That Bloom from Winter to Spring

Camellia is a Japanese tree that grows flowers from cold winter to spring.
It blooms with bright red, pink, and white flowers when other flowers are rare.
Its shiny green leaves stay green all year round.
The Japanese kanji character for Camellia is 「椿」, made of "tree" and "spring". It means a tree that tells us spring is coming!

Wild Camellia and Many Kinds of Flowers

The kind of Camellia that grows naturally in the mountains is called Yabu-tsubaki.
It has 5 red petals and a tube of yellow stamens in the center.
People have loved this flower for a very long time. They have created over 2,000 kinds, including double-flowered ones with many layers of petals, and striped pink-and-white ones!

Japanese White-Eyes and Camellia

Camellia flowers have lots of sweet nectar.
The nectar stays deep inside the tube in the middle of the flower.
There are not many insects in winter, so birds carry the Camellia pollen when they drink the nectar.
The Japanese White-eye loves Camellia flowers. They push their faces into the flowers to drink nectar, so their faces sometimes turn yellow from pollen!

3 Coloring Pages

The first page shows a red Yabu-tsubaki flower, a bud, and shiny leaves drawn from a photo.
The second page shows a pink double-flowered Camellia with petals layered like a swirl.
The third page shows a winter scene with two Japanese White-eyes on a snowy Camellia branch. One bird is drinking nectar with its face close to the flower.
For more winter flowers, check out the Sasanqua coloring page too!

A Flower Loved for Ages

People in Japan have cherished Camellia for over 1,000 years.
It is often planted at temples, shrines, and Japanese gardens, and it is a popular flower for tea ceremonies.
In the Edo period, creating new kinds of Camellia became super popular, and many rare flowers were born!
It also went to Europe, where people love it by the name "Camellia".
When you find a bright Camellia blooming in the winter cold, look closely to see if a Japanese White-eye is visiting!
Along with the spring flower Plum Blossom, it is a flower that brightens up the cold season.

Petals in bright red

Color the petals of the wild Camellia red.
If you make it dark red near the center and a little lighter around the edges, the flower will look nice and plump.
Color the stamens yellow, and make the tube part at the base white or pale yellow.

Shiny leaves

The tops of Camellia leaves are shiny, and the backs are a slightly whitish green.
Color the leaves dark green, then leave a thin white line along the middle vein to make them look shiny.
It is also nice to color the parts where the light hits yellow-green.
Color the branches light brown or gray.

For double flowers, think about the overlapping petals

For the double flower in the second picture, color the outer petals dark pink and the inner petals light pink to show the overlapping layers nicely.
The trick is to make the base of each petal just a little bit darker.

The Japanese white-eye bird is olive green

For the Japanese white-eye bird in the third picture, color its back yellow-green or olive green, and make its tummy whitish.
If you leave the rings around its eyes white, it will look just like a real Japanese white-eye bird!
Leave the snow white and color the sky light sky blue to make a cold winter morning scene.

White and speckled Camellias, too

Camellias can also have white flowers, or speckled flowers with red and white mixed together.
It is fun to change the flower in the first picture to white, pink, or speckled patterns to make your very own flower!

Flowers Fall All at Once

Camellia flowers do not lose their petals one by one. Instead, the whole flower falls off all at once.
This happens because the petals and the stamens are stuck together at the bottom.
Seeing lots of red flowers lying on the ground is a special sight you can only see with Camellia.

Camellia Oil

You can get an oil called Camellia oil from the seeds of the Camellia fruit.
People have used it for a very long time to put in their hair or for cooking.
Izu Oshima in Tokyo and the Goto Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture are famous places for Camellia.

How It Is Different from Sasanqua

There is a flower called Sasanqua that looks a lot like Camellia.
Sasanqua petals fall off one by one, and it starts to bloom at the end of autumn, a little earlier than Camellia.
Its leaves are a bit smaller, too.
Also, the stamens in the middle of the Sasanqua flower do not make a tube; they spread out instead.
You can tell which flower it is by looking at how the flower falls off.

Camellia Fruit

When the flower is done blooming, Camellia grows round fruit about the size of a ping-pong ball.
In autumn, the fruit pops open, and hard black seeds come out from inside.
Squeezing these seeds makes Camellia oil.