20 April 2010

The brier roses - Rosa altaica

Chapter 3 (extract 1) of "Roses for English Gardens" by Jekyll and Mawley (1902), in which Miss Jekyll contrasts the early flowering R. altaica with the European Burnet Rose.
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CHAPTER III
THE BRIER ROSES
Roses of one sort or another are with us in the open garden for five months out of the twelve, namely from the end of May to well on in October.

One of the first to bloom in an ordinary garden collection is likely to be Rosa altaica, the close forerunner of its near relations the Scotch Briers. Though it is a native of a far distant mountain range of Central Asia, it is almost identical in appearance with our native Burnet Rose (R. spinosissima). It blooms some ten days earlier and the flowers are a shade larger and the whole plant rather more free of growth, but there is the same bloom of tender lemon white, the same typical brier foliage and the same showy black hips. It is a capital garden plant, and takes its place naturally with the hardy Briers.

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