See text Stewartia (sometimes spelled Stuartia[1][2][3][4]) is a genus of 8-20 species of flowering plants in the family Theaceae, related to Camellia.

Most of the species are native to eastern Asia in China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, with two (S. malacodendron, S. ovata) in southeast North America, from Virginia and Kentucky south to Florida and Louisiana.

[3] The genus was named in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus to honour John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute.

Some botanists and horticulturists, mainly in the past[7][8][9] but still widely in the UK[1][2][3][4] have interpreted Article 60 of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature to consider "Stewartia" an orthographical error to be corrected to Stuartia, but this type of correction has been discouraged by changes to the code in recent times.

[3] However, the original spelling "Stewartia" has been accepted by virtually all systematic botanists in recent treatments of the family [10][11] and genus [5][12][13][14] as well as in numerous influential horticultural publications.