The Camphor Tree of Fota

Crush a leaf from this tree and it releases the smell the whole species is named for: camphor, the same compound once distilled from it for mothballs, chest rubs and embalming. It is a subtropical evergreen from southern China, Taiwan and Japan, and it has no business surviving outdoors in Ireland at all. It survives here because Fota Island sits in Cork Harbour with a frost-free microclimate that the Smith-Barry family exploited for three generations, from the 1820s onward, planting things nowhere else in the country could keep alive. The national heritage tree survey bands its age to 50 to 100 years, decades younger than the arboretum around it, and lists nothing more about how it got here. Every part of the tree, bark, wood, leaf and root, carries the same aromatic oil, which is also why camphor trees resist insects and rot better than almost anything else in a temperate garden that was never built to hold them. The register is the only source that has described this specific tree. If you know when it was planted, tell us.