Is the camellia a deciduous plant or an evergreen plant?
Camellia is a four-season evergreen broadleaf small tree with smooth, grayish-brown bark. It prefers a cool and humid climate and cannot tolerate high temperatures. It is distributed in some high mountain areas of a few provinces and counties in southern China.
I. Main products of camellia
Camellia fruit: camellia fruit is commonly known as oil tea seed or camellia seed. It is spherical or peach-shaped and can be refined into an important natural green organic health edible oil---camellia oil. Camellia blooms and bears fruit in autumn. It matures every year at "Cold Dew" or "Frost's Descent".
II. Uses of camellia
1. Used as edible oil: tea oil is a traditional edible vegetable oil unique to China, and its production and development have a long history. According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas from the 3rd century BC: “Yuanmu, the oil food of the south”, the “Yuanmu” mentioned here is oil tea.
2. Used in the cosmetics industry: research on camellia oil has found that it is rich in oleic acid glycerides, has a certain stability against acidification, and is not easily oxidized and rancid. As a pure natural vegetable oil, it can effectively inhibit acid value during refining and processing, and it can absorb ultraviolet rays to prevent skin from being burned by ultraviolet rays.
3. Used to prepare biofuel: camellia oil contains triglycerides, and its fatty acid carbon chains are mainly C16 and C18, close to fossil diesel. Under the action of a catalyst, it can undergo transesterification with methanol to generate fatty acid methyl esters (that is, first-generation biodiesel).
III. Main distribution range of camellia
It is distributed in some high mountain areas of a few provinces and counties in southern China. There are already more than 300 camellia varieties in China. Batch production has begun in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangsu, among other places. In the rocky crevices at an altitude of 380 m at Baoyan South of Huacheng Cave on Daluo Mountain in Rui'an County, Wenzhou, eastern Zhejiang Province, an ancient camellia tree with a tree age of more than 1,200 years is still preserved. In Lichuan County and Fenyi County of Jiangxi Province and Mount Emei in Sichuan Province, among other places, there are natural distributions of ancient tea trees over 1,000 years old that form wild forests.