the camellia journal

We nearly jumped out of our skins as the creature flushed from the tall weeds.

The Mississippi gulf coast has a long rich history with camellias, some may be myth. It is very difficult to determine

fact and fiction sometimes. Stephanie and I heard, of course, about the many varieties created and registered by

Thomas Simeon Closer, a collection which survived Hurricane Betsy, but was devastated by Hurricane Camille. (Recently,

I learned of a relative that might have copies of some of their lost creations. I visited the Gov. Hugh White mansion in Columbia, Mississippi to air layer that rare variety.)

However, on this day we had a different goal in mind. We were intrigued by a story written by Edwina N. Mogabgab and published in an old American Camellia Yearbook (1950, page 145). It covered her travels from the Louisiana state line

along the gulf coast, and the many collections of camellias along the way. We decided to “follow the footsteps of Edwina Mogabgab”, only 50 years later. The trek included some interesting finds.

Our first stop was the woods that were part of the 125,000 acre Stennis Testing Site. In testing rockets, the government was afraid of the damage that might be caused to homes (and the homeowners) in the area from the earth-shaking-tremors

and roar caused by the mighty engines. An acoustic buffer was desired to mitigate this damage. NASA therefore purchased

everything in a wide swath of the testing site, called the buffer zone. This assured that testing would not injure the residents.

Logtown, once a thriving community of over 3,000 (mostly lumber mill workers), had diminished by 1961 to only 250 residents, a virtual ghost of its former self.

We drove down a deserted road passing a gate and overgrown pathway into the woods. We passed it by and continued on to another more travelled dirt road that had no gate. We parked and started walking. However, this road didn’t seem to be

leading anywhere meaningful. Not sure of anything, we might encounter—snakes (we both hated snakes) and other critters— we nearly jumped out of our skins as the creature flushed from the tall weeds. It was a wild turkey, cackling in scorn as it

took flight in front of us. It was probably as scared of us as we were of it.

Driving on, we found the Logtown cemetery— actually one of the two cemeteries, as there were segregated burials; black

and white cemeteries existed. We found many camellias growing on the plots therein, typical of many of the cemeteries along the Mississippi coast. Many old varieties and their blooms on the ground looked back at us as we investigated the cemetery. But this was not the property we were searching for.

So it was back to the first questionable gate. No signage restricted passage and the path revealed recent usage by vehicles. Parking on the road side, we slid through the fence and started walking down the overgrown pathway. We watched our steps on the muddy trail, ever vigilant for slithering reptiles.

An amazingly large crepe myrtle greeted us (we did not identify this plant as a crepe myrtle until a later visit when it was blooming). I would later stand by it so we could estimate its height (around 40 to 45 feet by our estimation). We’d never seen one growing wild like this—tall, majestic and huge.

Pressing on, we found what we were looking for: a very large camellia with red semi-double blooms. It appeared similar to a wild japonica seedling, but a semi-double rather than a typical single (the 1950 story reported that it had been purchased by Miss Annette Koch’s sea captain father from a nursery at Pine Hills, Mississippi and planted in 1875). The plant had grown  large—tall and wide and had lots of its own seedlings below it. It was a great find, as the plant was about 125-years-old, based on Mogabgab’s report and the time that had passed since that writing.

The 1938 Federal Writers’ Project report described the house as “the picturesque NETTIE KOCH HOME, erected before 1820. The original part of the house, consisting of two rooms, is constructed of logs. ... The kitchen floor is of timbers 30 inches wide and several inches thick, taken from a dismantled flatboat that drifted down Pearl River. The house is surrounded by live oaks, sycamores, and cedars. A red camellia japonica in the small courtyard rises higher than the house.” That was where we stood, amazed at the size of the camellia and its health over all that time.

Mogabgab reported that in 1950 it was 40 feet tall and 32 feet wide and very healthy—not even any scale at that time. Despite the years of neglect, the plant’s only issue was a severe case of tea scale. It had survived the abuse of major hurricanes and still thrived. We later returned to the property equipped with oil spray to treat the infected lower leaves where the shady, damp environment had caused the scale to develop.

We also propagated it and called it “Miss Nettie” (the name of the wonderful woman, Annette Koch, who had been the property’s owner and whose family never relinquished the rights to visit the family cemetery on premises. She was known for sharing her profusion of blooms with the residents all around the Logtown area, but only short stemmed flowers. Even this simple, red camellia was a novelty to the Logtown residents.

We sighted parts of the old homestead’s foundation (the buildings were all demolished by the government), but we were searching for the children’s cemetery because Mogabgab said there were more camellias there. The cemetery was off to the left, and behind this special resting place were two more camellias. These included a large ‘Sarah Frost’ peering at us with its “owl eyes”. This plant had been planted in 1886 over her mother’s grave (although it was later moved for fear it would grow too large in the cemetery).

Here in the woods of the Stennis Testing Site were marvelous plants, well over a hundred years of age, still alive, and in good condition. As evening was coming, we ended our reliving of Mogabgab’s travels for that day, pleased with our first historic finds.