Welcome to the “NEW” web site for the International Camellia Society.  With the relaunch of the website, the camellia world has an updated and enhanced entrée into an international community of camellia lovers.  Our aim is to help people around the world share their passion for this most beautiful of flowers.

The ICS website was created in 1992 by our first Internet Coordinator, Dr. Klaus Peper.  Klaus, a physiologist on the faculty of the University of Saarland Medical School, in Homburg, in Germany.  Klaus worked with Dr. Lutz Sternfeld, then a student of physiology, who had also developed an interest in Internet communications, to create one of the very first websites devoted to a floral genus.   At that time,  very few people knew about “The Internet”, let alone what the Internet could eventually be able to do for them.  These two far-seeing people set the ICS on a confident path into the future, a future that would become increasingly oriented toward electronic communication and dissemination of information.  They selflessly supported the website, including funding the server who hosted our website. Lutz is still the owner of one of the ICS domain names (camellia-ics.org).

Very early on, Klaus reached out to Australia’s Kylie Waldon, who established an ICS Australia website.  This website served for years, until the Australian Camellia Research Society (now Camellias Australia) was able to pull together a national network of enthusiasts to create and support a website devoted to that country’s camellias.  Kylie was then able to “retire” from the ICS website team, leaving Australian coverage in the hands of her compatriots.

From the beginning, Klaus and Lutz envisaged a Camellia Register on the website.  In his report for the ICS Directors’ meeting in Pasadena, California, in 2001, Klaus formally asked the board for permission to create a search engine that could be used in conjunction with an electronically formatted register.  That dream never came to pass – soon after that, Klaus became seriously ill, and his attention was diverted from the project.  But the notion remained in the minds of ICS Directors, who eventually assigned ICS Italy Director Gianmario Motta, a professor at the University of Pavia (Italy), and a team of his students, the challenge of bringing the Camellia Register to the Web.  This project was completed in 2008, with subsequent updatings, and now provides open access to camellia enthusiasts and researchers around the world.

I succeeded Klaus as Web Editor in 2004, following his death. With Lutz’s calm, constructive advice and assistance since then, I have tried to incorporate some of the many suggestions from website visitors into the design of the website.  However, my efforts, as an amateur, are no match for changing technological demands.  Hence the formation of a new website team.  It is led by David Trehane, one of the U.K.’s camellia-specialist Trehane family, who will work with freelance web-design professionals to  develop a website capable of meeting our visitors’ evolving needs and expectations in the years to come.   

We hope you enjoy our “NEW” website!

Patricia L. Short

President

The International Camellia Society