Hi fleur i have several camellia sinensis plants. My plants have done this as they are very young right now they have the growing tip die off on a few. its almost certainly a fungus attack and a teaspoon of baking soda and water in a spray bottle will get ride of it. Make sure you spray under all the leaves with this mixture and give the soil a nice dampening with it. This will change the PH of the soil on the top couple inches and on the leaves. Makes sure the fungus can't grow. If you would like to tune into my Garden channel on youtube you can where i will have some more little tid bits on camellia and as well as some other food crops my channel is TheItalian Garden. hope this helped you if not ask me on my channel video How to grow camellia and i will see if i can assist you ferther.

sounds like deer to me, too. some years are worse than others around my yard. they usually don't bother the leaves or branches on mine but they will take almost every flower bud, open or tightly closed, from the shrub. i have had success in years past by putting out strongly scented bar soap shavings wedged in the branches. have to do that before they discover the flowers, though. irish spring is a soap i used which kept them away. if you cut the soap pieces large enough, they will stay there through several rains and melt into the branch crotches.

Last year I had the same problem, and it was rose weevils. I killed as many as I could, but they really ruined the bloom on any of the plants that they were on. They seemed to prefer certain rose bushes more than others. I am still waiting for my first rose blooms to open this year, so I will see how it goes. I could not find any way to get rid of them other than hand picking them - and in my opinion didn't work well since I didn't get any decent blooms out of the roses they were on all summer. The holes appeared like small prefectly round holes, with I think a darker edge, possibly from the rose bud wilting around the edge of the hole. Just so you know, the best way to get the weevils is to get a pail with soapy water and hold it under the weevil, as soon as you get close to it it will try to drop to the ground, but instead you catch it in the water and it drowns. There was a link on her last year, since I was asking the same thing!

OK, so after I made a fool out of myself (but at least my heart was in the right place and I was TRYING to help) I sent the photo to a friend who is a biology professor and does a lot of "bug stuff". Without me telling him what tree you found it on, he told me it is a.....wait for it...."Gray Persimmon Weevil". I Googled that and am now 100% convinced he is right. Take a look for yourself: http://bugguide.net/node/view/179397/bgimage So....hopefully I've redeemed myself? And you were already on the right track. Hope that helps.