Camellias

Camellias figured prominently in The Optimist's Daughter, as "Laurel's eye travelled among the urngs that marked the graves of the McKelvas and saw the favorite camellia of her father's, the old-fashioned Chandlerii Elegans, that he had planted on her mother's grave—big now as a pony, saddled with unplucked bloom living and dead, standing on a fading carpet of its own flowers."

Camellia japonicas bloom underneath Eudora’s bedroom window. Second shrub from left is the variety ‘Lady Clare’, a name she gave to a character in her novel Delta Wedding.