Genus Camellia

For Georg Joseph Kamel (La. Camellus) (1661–1706), Moravian Jesuit missionary, apothecary, artist and botanist. He was sent to the Mariana Islands (1683) and Manila, Philippines (1688) where he established a pharmacy, providing poor people with remedies for free. He botanised on Luzon island, north of Manila, collecting some 360 varieties of plants and herbs which he sent to the British botanists, Rev. John Ray, and James Petiver, who published Herbarium aliarumque stirpium in insula Luzone Philippinarum (Herbs and Medicinal Plants in the Island of Luzon, Philippines). Further specimens came from Chinese gardens at Manila. His first shipment of botanical drawings failed to reach England as a result of piracy. Kamel also co-wrote the first account of Philippine birds, Observationes de Avibus Philippensibus (1702), published by the Royal Society.