Peony? Camellia? Rose?

Rose! That was the first thing that came to our minds when we saw a bush full of these pink flowers in the garden of a house in Nikko. But then a closer look and we were confused. “A peony?” The Family asked. “A camellia?” I wondered. A rose would not have the long stamens that this has, I thought. The Family thought that the arrangement of petals did not look like a rose’s. So it wasn’t a rose. But what was it? We are terrible at identifying garden plants, and have no experience with the flowers of late winter and early spring in the temperate zones. So we took photos and thought we would be able to identify them later.

A quick search led us to a very useful blog post which explained how to distinguish between our three possibilities. As always, when a flower leaves you confused you have to look at the leaves. We knew rose leaves. They are thin and delicate. This was not a rose. Peonies have deeply lobed leaves, which these were not. So, not a peony either. The leaves of a camellia are thick, glossy and oval, tapering to a point. And they are serrated! This must be a camellia.