By Nan Peacocke
For Coastal Senior

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, all Southerners aren't rednecks. In fact you may be a redneck and not be Southern. How can you tell if you're really Southern and not just a red neck posing as one?

There are ways.

If you're really Southern or even aspiring to be a Southerner you need to be able to tell the difference between camellias and azaleas.

You also need to know that for an East coast Southerner the words "azalea" and "camellia" must rhyme. The Gulf and West coasts can answer for themselves, but in these parts the two rhyme.

If you don't know how to pronounce azalea just skip this article. You're hopeless. If you know how to pronounce azalea, remember camellia sounds just like it... only different.

This year's Camellia Show was in the mall again. How democratically cosmopolitan! When can we please get back to having a real Camellia show? I couldn't read the names of the flowers the print was so small and the tables so low and far from my eyes. Yes, camellias have different names. Any Southerner knows their basic camellia names just as surely as their own mother's face. There is only one problem. Real camellia people are constantly hybridizing by grafting so that in order to keep up with things you need to be able to read the names of the flowers. This year that was impossible because of the above named problems and poor lighting.

Secondly, it matters who the grower is. I realize it is fashionable to sign your name in a manner that is unreadable but that is not the problem here. Why is the grower's name important, you ask?

My mother died in 1990 but was entering camellias in the show until 1999. When I finally became insensitive enough to ask a family member how this was possible I was told.

My sister, who inherited her plants, felt mother's care of the flowers was still evident nine years later. Only in the last few years has my sister entered flowers from those plants in her own name as grower. None of that mattered this year. For the same reason that you couldn't make out the flower name, you couldn't tell who the grower was either.

There is a time for a Camellia Show and then there is past peak. There were few Mathotianae, Pirate's Gold or Pirate's Pride or anything else because of the freeze. I asked last year's Gold winner why and was told he went out to pick his Pirate's Gold and it had fallen off the bush. That's past prime, folks. Then there was the ill-timed freeze. Everything was beautifully blooming and along came cold. Even snow!

If you're still with me, you're either a real Southerner or determined to become one. If you're the latter there are a few camellias you must know.

The "Debutante" is pale pink with ruffled center petals. The "Professor Sergeant" (not its full pedigree name) is a lot like it but is red and larger. "Pink Perfection" is the color and size of the "Debutante" but the center is a continuation of smooth petals forming a bud.

If you're caught in a bind and can't remember any of those names just call them Japonicas. It is the name for all camellias because they originally came from, you guessed it, Japan. The name Japonica sort of trumps all nomenclature since only very old, very Southern ladies use it when we become too old to remember details.

In spite of these constant identification problems at the camellia show, my second sister and I attended this year. Our posture was stooped into a right angle to try to read the details. My back was aching but I knew we were almost through when a woman interrupted our viewing with a decidedly non-Southern accent.

"Why on earth are you bending over to smell the flowers," she demanded. "Camellias don't have a fragrance."

I looked, no, glared at her with pure hostility. How dare she presume to tell me a fact I knew full well. But I caught myself in time.

Like a Southern lady I smiled and said, "Yes, I know."

Through clenched teeth, of course.