Camellia Flowers and The Battle of the Buttonholes

The evergreen Camellia shrub was cultivated in parts of China and Japan before being transplanted via mercantile ships into the gardens of Europe. Greenfingered settlers brought the plant with them as they attempted to recreate the bright domestic gardens of British upper-middle-class homes in the colonial wilderness of New Zealand. The Camellia flourished in the complementary climate.  In the early 1890s, as women were agitating for the right to vote in New Zealand elections, two varieties of the plant, the white flower (Camellia japonica alba plena)  and the red flower (possibly a similar variety of Camellia Japonica)  became unlikely symbols of the ideological differences between the suffragists (‘suffragettes’) and their detractors. 

The ‘Battle of the Buttonholes’, as it was named by the media at the time, began when Kate Sheppard, leader of the Women’s Temperance Union, used the pure white flower of the ‘alba plena’ as a symbol of support for electoral reform.^[1] On the 12th of September 1893, the all-male members of parliament entered parliament to vote on a reform of the Electoral Act which would allow most women the right to vote. Sheppard and other suffragists gave members that supported the Bill the white flower tied with a ribbon to attach to their buttonholes, the shrub would have been in full springtime bloom at this time. The flower was both an acknowledgement of their support as well as a public declaration of the need for change.^[2]

The vote passed 20/18, thanks to two members who changed their vote in response to the meddling of then Prime Minister Richard Seddon who was against the Bill.  Weeks of protest followed, sponsored by liquor industries worried that allowing the voting rights to include Christian Temperance women would curtail the sale of alcohol in the colony.^[3] During these protests, women who were against the reform gave a basket of red Camellia flowers to a member of parliament.  He distributed these amongst parliamentary supporters of petitions to make the Governor reject the Bill. ^[4] The red perhaps signifying the passion with which the Bill should be rejected; akin to a visual blood on your hand’s statement. The Act was passed, and the white Camellia carried the symbolic legacy of the first sovereign country to allow all women over the age of 21 the right to vote. The inclusion did not extend to women of Asian descent, who remained like males of Asian descent official personae non-gratae. Ironic given the ancestry of the Camellia itself.