If the tea stain that you are talking about gets larger as the temperatures increase and time passes, it may be a fungal infection. Please check the information/pictures on the link below by the American Camellia Society. You can see more information here too: http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-0416/

Bud drop on the other hand can be caused by several things. One common culprit is the camellia bud mite. If you detect a mite infestation when opening buds that have fallen then use a miticide (best applied when buds have set in the Fall).

Another cause is environmental factors such as (a) temperatures that girate wildly, first high then low and everywhere in between or (b) soil that is not evenly moist but rather is allowed to get too dry, then gets wet, then dry again, etc. Moving it to the east side location and providing more uniform moist soil might help with these environmental problems.

I had a pretty severe drought last summer too and that resulted in a large reduction in the number of buds but there was no bud drop and, so far, the japonicas have not shown any bloom problems. The blooms, however, are now starting to open so I am crossing my fingers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Camellia Petal Blight Info by the ACS

East walls are not good for winter- and spring-blooming camellias unless shaded from morning sun during frost. If you go ahead and get the plant in the ground you will not have to worry about what is going on inside the pot.

Thanks for all the input. I'm starting to think maybe this was caused by the cold snap we had in early February. That caused me to lose the first bud that started to open. Even though I had the Camellia under a sheet, the bud still died in the freeze.

I noticed this morning that my 3 surviving flowers are all on lower branches, which seems like maybe the cold played a role.

I don't think it's petal blight because of what I've read about petal blight, and the pictures I've seen. It sounds like petal blight destroys flowers in a matter of 48 hours. My flowers look much less damaged than what I see of petal blight, and they usually fall off before they even open, or right as the bud starts to open.

I have a couple of pictures if that will help.

Here is the most recent flower to drop. This one is by far the worst one I've seen yet. It has the most obvious damage. All of the other affected flowers have less visible damage than this: http://i.imgur.com/trZVy.jpg

This is one of the good, surviving flowers, though it does have some obvious signs of damage on the side. It still feels healthy and strong and has a good connection to the branch: http://i.imgur.com/xdHyC.jpg

You should be able to copy/paste those URLs to see the pictures.

From your description of problem, it seemed pretty obvious that jay_7bsc was correct in stating that it was cold damage to flower buds. Your photos confirmed this. If it was my plant, I would follow his advice and get it in the ground. As jay mentioned, do not plant on east side of house if the sun can shine on it early in morning while flower buds are still frozen. It has been my experience that your type of bud damage occurs more often when there is rapid fluctuation in temperatures. They can withstand colder temperatures as long as the temperatures remain more constant. I have also noticed that white, or light color, flower buds are more tender and are more prone to get cold damage.

Thanks, camellias1_roses2 and everyone else!

I'll assume this was cold damage and get it in the ground asap and hope next year is more consistent in temperature.

I do have one other question.

I said the rest of the plant looked healthy, but I just noticed something else yesterday. If you look in the second picture, some of the leaves have black/purplish spots on them. Do you think this is also cold or maybe sun damage?

I've read that black spots on Camellia can be anything from last year's sun damage to fungal/bacterial infection or worse.

The fact that the leaves appear otherwise healthy, and the black spots aren't raised or textured makes me hopeful this might just be last year's sun damage.

We had an intensely hot summer in 2011.

We are in southeast PA, almost in zone 6, and I have 4 camellias which I've had in the ground for 2 winters with no protection, not even mulch. If you know the variety is hardy and the issue is watering, why not plant them? There are varieties not hardy in zone7a, though, but most japonicas do well here, don't they?
They also require an acid soil, but you knew that. I'm including a picture of an unknown variety that came as a freebie with the other 3. It began to bloom in December but the blooms turned brown after a hard freeze. It's blooming now...I took the picture today. If you know what it is, all suggestions are welcome.

This post was edited by pjb448 on Sat, Apr 20, 13 at 19:14

RE: pjb448--That looks to me like it might be a Taylor's Perfection.