JESUITICA: A brilliant botanist

Georg Kamel (1661-1706), a Moravian Jesuit, worked as a missionary-pharmacist in the Philippines, and would send newly discovered plant specimens back to Europe to be studied and classified. The great Carl Linnaeus, in recognition of Kamel’s contribution to botany, named the camellia after him. And as the plant from which tea leaves are taken is of the camellia genus (Camellia Sinensis), this Jesuit brother of high renown might be respectfully remembered as we wash down our morning toast with a hot cuppa. The camellia pictured here was planted in the Crescent, Limerick, in 1969 by William Troddyn SJ.