After the purchase, I kept it in a pot the first 3 years and it bloomed yearly. We then moved to Oregon and I planted it in the ground. For 2 years it rarely bloomed because of the deer so I repotted it to keep it near the house. This year it was covered in its typical blooms ......see photo.
I planted it back in the ground late this spring and it actually bloomed 4 weeks ago......just a few branches, not the whole plant. Anyway, my problem is: all the blooms were white!! It's covered in buds and I can see lots of white in the buds.

Does anyone know what could possibly be causing this?

Laurie.

I've been checking out the recommended books and hope to get a couple later this week.
Any advice appreciated....................

The latter is my preferred camellia progagation method and I usually do a couple dozen per year.

Best of luck with your new baby!

Bill.

Do you know for sure that it was a rooted cutting that you bought? Or, is there a possibility that it was a cutting grafted onto a rootstock? Perhaps your red camellia came grafted onto a root stock which has put out a few branches of its own that are now blooming white. Are the branches you describe with white flowers coming out at or connected to branches that come out at the base of the plant? This would support the rootstock idea. One of the reasons this seems likely is that you describe the white blooms as having come just recently, at a different time of year than the red blooms. Perhaps the root stock is a fall blooming type while the topstock is a spring bloomer.

As for grafting some of the white blooming branches onto something, I agree with Virginia Bill that you might want to consider layering so you get a plant on its own roots, which precludes a situation later where the rootstock starts producing flowers different from the topgraft. If you do successfully graft, the rootstock will have no affect on the flower color or blooming of the topstock.

I have a beautiful fall blooming camellia called 'Setsugekka' (a very common variety sold commercially) which last year started throwing deep magenta-red blooms as well, and I did indeed find that all of the red flowers could be traced back to a single large branch coming off just at the base of the plant. I did a little research and found that a variety called 'Kanjiro' (common in commerce for its own flowers as well) is very often used as rootstock for grafting fall blooming camellias, and the red flowers completely match the photos and descriptions I've found of this variety.

- Steve

Interesting enough, most gardeners of western contries and China enjoy "more petals" camellia flowers. Single camellia flowers however are very popular in Japan.