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Like a beautiful pink camellia, that's how you appear to me 

That bloom in chilly August on it's dark green mother tree 

So bright and fresh and pretty in the wintery wind and rain 

That's how you've always looked to me and that's how you will remain. 

The beautiful camellia flower that blooms fresh and young today 

In two or three weeks if that long will have gone into decay 

For flowers have such a brief span they quickly fade away 

But in sixty years of living your beauty with you stay. 

 I feel privileged and grateful for to have you as a friend 

And I will love you and respect you until my life will end 

You are warm and kind hearted and well loved and well known 

And it's due to you and to you only that into a better person I have grown. 

 You are wise and quite intelligent and beautiful to behold 

And you don't have a gray hair on your head and you never will grow old 

And on your sixtieth birthday you still look beautiful to me 

Like the young and pretty pink flower on the green camellia tree. 

 ~Francis Duggan 

Camellias were cultivated in the gardens of China and Japan for centuries before they were seen in Europe. The German botanist Engelbert Kaempfer reported that the "Japan Rose", as he called it, grew wild in woodland and hedgerow, but that many superior varieties had been selected for gardens. He was told that the plant had 900 names in Japanese. Europeans' earliest views of camellias must have been their representations in Chinese painted wallpapers, where they were often represented growing in porcelain pots.

~wiki