Rose 'Burgundy Iceberg'

Sporting roses are nothing new. A sport is a mutation of an existing rose, and this was the origin of the moss rose (a sport of the cabbage or Provence rose - Rosa centifolia).

Sporting usually takes the form of a bud mutation in which a mutation occurs in a single vegetative cell. Most single cell mutations (also called "somatic mutations") are dead-ends because they don't cause a detectable phenotype. However, if by happy chance the somatic mutation occurs in an actively dividing cell, that mutation can end up forming a whole bud and then a whole shoot and so on.

This happened in a bed of 'Iceberg' roses in the Australian garden of Lila Weatherley. One shoot of the normally pure white 'Iceberg' produced pink flowers. Lila Weatherley recognised the importance of this and ended up marketing the rose through Swanes Nursery (a big rose house in Australia). And because the sport only affects the colour, and because Iceberg is a superb white rose, 'Pink Iceberg', likewise, is a superb pink rose.

But the story doesn't end there. This chance discovery launched a plant breeding career for Lila Weatherley who founded the plant breeding company Prophyl. There soon followed another rose 'Brilliant Pink Iceberg', which in turn sported to 'Burgundy Iceberg'.

Now, I have never drunk a Burgundy wine quite the colour of this rose, so the name is a slight misnomer. It has been described as "smoky plum" and this is spot on. It is certainly a very interesting colour - made even more so by the slight silvering on the reverse of the petals. People gardening in hot climates have been disappointed with the colour which is said to develop more strongly in cool climates. Here in the relatively cool Pacific north-west we are delighted by the colour (see photo), one which is found in relatively few modern roses and is reminiscent of some of the old roses.

An interesting rose indeed.

Rose Dublin Bay

The floribunda climbers 'Altissimo' and 'Bantry Bay' are both lovely climbers so it is not surprising that when they were crossed they gave rise to another lovely rose: 'Dublin Bay'.

Both 'Bantry Bay' and 'Dublin Bay' were raised by the famous Northern Ireland rose grower, Sam McGredy - hence their evocative Irish names, lapped by the Atlantic and the Irish Sea respectively. From 'Altissimo', 'Dublin Bay' inherited the rich red colour, and from 'Bantry Bay' (a pink rose) it inherited its fullness of flower. The result is a remarkable bloom. 'Dublin Bay' is a richer red even than its parent 'Altissimo'. For those who like their rose reds rich, this is the one for you.

Rosa "Doncasteri" hips - a good display

I have written before about Mr Doncaster's rose with its lovely flush of pink flowers early in the spring. Well now it is in hip - and beautiful hips they are too - like bright shiny chilli peppers hanging on the bush. Some people are loath to give these nearly wild shrubs room in the garden as they don't flower all summer long. But would we expect rhododendrons to flower all summer long? Yet people are all too keen to give them houseroom, and they don't even have bright red hips.

Rosa "Doncasteri" gives bright flowers in abundance in June and graces us with elegant arching sprays of foliage in July. By August the hips are already ripening and delighting us again.

A very well worthwhile rose!

Rosa gallica "Versicolor" - rosa mundi or Fair Rosamund's rose

This ancient striped gallica, "Versicolor", known from well before 1600, is clearly a striped sport of the even more ancient gallica variety "Officinalis".

Versicolor is even lower growing than Officinalis and makes a wonderful clipped border hedge (as at Hidcote) and often reverts to Officinalis.

Tradition has it that Officinalis (the Provins rose) was brought back from the Barons Crusade (1239-1241) by King Theobald I of Navarre to his castle at Provins near Paris in 1240. Tradition also has it that he carried it all the way from Damascus in his helmet.

No one knows exactly where or when the striped form arose but it must have been after this.

What of the curious name "rosa mundi"? The Latin literally means rose of the world (i.e. with the world's impurities) as opposed to the Latin "rosa munda" meaning "pure rose". The name therefore alludes to the impurity of its colouring being splashed red and white.

This play on words is said to have been the epitaph on the tomb (now lost) of Fair Rosamund, the mistress of Henry II, who was eventually banished to a nunnery for her impropriety.

Hic jacet in tumba Rosamundi non Rosamunda, Non redolet sed olet, quae redolere solet.
(Here lies entombed a worldly rose, not a rose that's pure; she who used to smell so sweet, now smells but not so sweetly)

White splashed with crimson indeed.

Rosa gallica "Officinalis" - the Apothecary Rose

Rose gallica is a European wild rose, a small shrub (usually less that 4 ft) and by convention considered red (actually more a deep reddish pink). A semi-double form "Officinalis" (see photograph, left) is one of the earliest recoded cultivated roses. It has many names, for instance: "The Provins Rose" (after the beautiful medieval town of Provins just outside Paris), or simply "The Red Rose". It is also the rose with the best claim to being the "Red Rose of Lancaster", the symbol of one of the warring factions in the wars of the roses.

The semi-double form is said to have originated in Damascus and been taken from thence by the crusader King Theobald in 1240 - taken back to his castle at Provins hence the name "Provins rose".

It has a fruity (rather than musky) scent, similar to the scent of Rosa damascena, and is a lovely garden plant. Its small size means that it can easily be used in flower borders and even to edge them, as it can be clipped into a lax low hedge. In Hidcote garden in England the striped form "Versicolor" has been used like this - to fabulous effect.

During the 19th century it spawned many sports and hybrids. The best of these (and all are my favourites!) are: "Belle de Crécy", "Cardinal de Richelieu" "Charles de Mills" and "Tuscany Superb". However, there is much to be said for the true original Apothecary Rose, and even for the wild single red rose. In Miss Jekyll's time the gallica roses were considered dépassé. She wrote about them only briefly in her chapter on the "Old Garden Roses":

"[The rose] Provins is Rosa gallica, the garden kinds being mostly striped; pretty, but not of the first importance..."

Being such an ancient variety, it became firmly embedded in medieval European culture. The red rose (Rosa gallica) and the lily (Lilium candidum) are described by the monk Walafrid Strabo (808 - 849 CE) in his poem "Hortulus". He makes it clear that the red of Rosa gallica had entered into Christian iconography as symbolizing the blood of the martyrs.

"These two flowers, well loved and honoured far and wide

Down many centuries have stood as emblems

Of the greatest treasures of the Church - the Rose plucked

As a sign of the blood shed by the blessed martyrs;

The Lily worn as a shining symbol of faith."

Similarly, when Hubert van Eyck (c. 1385 – 1426) set out to paint the great altarpiece at Ghent ("The Adoration of the Lamb"), his panel depicting the male martyrs has them standing by a red rose, using the same symbolism described by Strabo. It is commonly assumed that the red rose was also a symbol of Christ's passion. Actually there is little evidence of this. The standard symbol of the Passion during the Middle Ages was the heraldic pelican - pecking its breast to feed its young with its own blood.

The name "Apothecary rose" signifies correctly that this was by far the most important rose in ancient medicine. Nicholas Culpeper (1616 - 1654) in his Complete Herbal, always quick to criticise his contemporaries, says (mischievously):

"What a pother have authors made with roses! What a racket have they kept? I shall add, red Roses [Rosa gallica] are under Jupiter, Damask [R. damascena] under Venus, White [R. alba] under the moon and Provence [R. centifolia] under the King of France."

Rosa x damascena, Rose of Damascus, Damask Rose

This beautiful stately rose is one of the oldest cultivated roses known. It is tall growing, 6ft, with bluish foliage and has flowers of a rich magenta red. In the original the flowers are single (or with a few extra petals). If grown on its own roots it will sucker, but not vigorously. The long blooming form of Rosa damascena ("The Quatre Saisons Rose") is to be preferred, as John Lindley noted:

"The bloom is exceedingly fragrant. R. bifera of some continental botanists is the Quatre seasons Rose of the French nurseries; and perhaps, from the long succession of its flowers, the most esteemed of all the varieties. Immense numbers in pots are sold weekly in the flower markets in Paris. I perceive no character to distinguish it, even as a variety, from the more common state of damascena, unless its smaller size be sufficient."

From: Rosarum monographia; or a botanical history of roses.

by John Lindley, printed for James Ridgway, 16a, Piccadilly.

1820.

Hurst suggested a separate origin for the summer damasks (R. gallica x R. phonicea) and the long blooming form, the so-called autumn damasks (R. gallica x R. moschata). This hypothesis, quite plausible, remained untested for over 50 years. The problem is that the summer and autumn damasks are not really different except in flowering behaviour - as Lindley correctly observed.

More recently some Japanese scientists [1] have suggested a single triparental origin for all damasks involving a first cross between the European species R. moschata (maternal parent) and R. gallica. This hybrid then crossed with the central Asian R. fedtschenkoana (from Xinjiang and Kazakhstan). If the genetic evidence for this hypothesis holds up then we are left with a historical conundrum: what strange quirk of history allowed a Mediterranean hybrid to cross with a central Asian wild rose from Kazakhstan, and where? The second mating must have taken place not much later than 1000 AD, and perhaps much before as R. damascena is an ancient rose. The origin of the damask rose is testament to the transfer of plants along the "Silk Road" between Europe and central Asia. Damask silks were woven in Damascus but the key ingredient - silk - came along the silk road from China. In the same way the damask rose was introduced to Europe from Damascus but a key ingredient - Rosa fedtschenkoana - came from China (or somewhere in central Asia).

The involvement of R. fedtschenkoana in the origin of the damasks does help to explain the morphology of the damasks - notably the greyish foliage and the pear shaped hips.

[1] H. Iwata, T. Kato, S. Ohno (2000) Triparental origin of Damask roses. Gene 259: 53–59.

Rosa alba "Semiplena"

Rosa alba, the White Rose of York is an ancient rose, much loved by Miss Jekyll. It was chosen by the Yorkists for their emblem, against Rosa gallica (or possibly Rosa damascena), the red rose of Lancaster. It is a lovely scented white single rose with attractive greyish foliage.

The story every English schoolchild learns is that sometime around 1450 Richard Plantagenet (Yorkist) and the Earl of Somerset (Lancastrian) met with other nobles in the Temple Garden in London to debate allegiance. Growing in the Temple garden was a bed of roses, white and red. As Shakespeare tells it:

Plantagenet: Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,

In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts:

Let him that is a true-born gentleman

And stands upon the honour of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

Somerset: Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,

But dare maintain the party of the truth,

Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

The Temple Garden still exists as part of the Inns of Court in London. The name comes from the fact that it was the precinct of the Knights Templar in the 12th century, later passing into the hands of the Knights Hospitaller. The Halls became infested with lawyers in the 14th century, who found the site agreeable and never left.

Of course the Rosa alba picked by Richard may have been the fully double Rosa alba "Maxima", but the the semi-double variety Rosa alba "Semiplena", which is illustrated in the photograph here, is probably older. This has the best claim to be the Yorkists' rose.

Rosa gallica "Officinalis" and Rosa alba "Semiplena" are lovely together just as they were in the Temple garden in 1450. The taller Rosa alba should be in the middle and the gallicas planted around the outside - the result is the purest expression of the rose - that quintessence that entered into western culture in the high Middle Ages and, like the lawyers, never left.

Reine des Violettes

Raised in France in 1860, Reine des Violettes is one of the quintessential old roses. It put the luscious floral scent scent into the nostrils of the high Victorian age. Is it violet in colour? That would be an overstatement, although the purple-pink flowers do fade to give a mauve tint. The name may be more appropriate if the rich scent reminds one of sweet violets.

Usually classed as a Hybrid Perpetual, as it supposedly has tea rose in its ancestry, it looks more like an old Autumn Damask. It is said to have been selected by Millet-Mallet from a seedling of the rose "Pius IX", a rose named after the incumbent Pope of the day (a strongly Marian Pope who died in 1874).

The flowers of RdV are flat, well stuffed and quartered in the damask manner. A rose to treasure indeed, but it may be a shadow of its former self as there is some concern that viral load affects modern plants of this variety.

Sarah Van Fleet - rugosa hybrid

Now what did Miss Jekyll say about rugosa roses? Ah yes -

"The danger in rugosa hybrids is the tendency towards a strong magenta colouring".

Yes, that difficult magenta colour present in the typical R. rugosa species - it is not rose red, nor rose pink, but more like a rather nasty chemical spill in an IG Farben factory.

Fortunately not all rugosas carry this trait. The white rugosas can be very good, especially the glacial white of Blanc double de Coubert. The pinks too can be exceptionally soft and subtle. Conrad F. Meyer is an excellent plant with impressive salmon pink flowers.

However it is Sarah Van Fleet (see photograph) that is arguably the most beautiful of the pink rugosas. It is a delicate washed pink coupled with a graceful flower-form. Graham Thomas describes it as "shallow cups of cool pink with a hint of lilac" and that just about does the job. It was raised by Van Fleet (USA) in 1926 and said to result from a cross between R. rugosa and a long forgotten pink hybrid tea, "My Maryland".

Gertrude Jekyll and the ugly cottage

Gertrude Jekyll had a highly developed aesthetic sense. This has been discussed in another post. The roadside cottage (illustrated) she characterised as one of a class of buildings "worse than plainly ugly - debased by fictitious so-called ornament of the worst class". Only roses are the means by which such ugliness "may be redeemed and even made beautiful".

The little house, although never having any architectural pretension, was not built ugly. As Miss Jekyll explains:

The little house itself has lost much of its true character from the evident alteration of the windows, which would originally have been either lead lights and casements, or, if sash windows, would have had the panes smaller, with rather thick sash-bars. The large panes destroy the proportion and make the house look too small for them. Some ugly flat frames to all the windows, and pediment-shaped additions to the tops of the lower ones, do much to destroy and vulgarise the effect of what must have been a little building with the modest charm of perfect simplicity. The lead-roofed porch is right, and so is the open wooden railing. One cannot but be thankful that when the windows were altered so much for the worse, the railing was not replaced by a cast-iron "ornamental" atrocity.

The person who replaced the windows on this building simply had no sense of proportion and created ugliness where none existed. Miss Jekyll never lived to see the debasement of the architectural profession to the point where persons of no aesthetic training or sensibility are permitted to design buildings. The results would horrify Miss Jekyll and she would prescribe roses left, right and centre.

"A modest dwelling that has no special beauty or character may by a clever use of climbing Roses be converted into a delightful object."

Despite its problem windows and general debasement, the ugly cottage shown above is redeemed by roses. She admits: "No one could pass the roadside cottage shown in the illustration without a thrill of admiration for the free-growing cluster Rose that covers the walls and wreaths the front of the porch."

Rose 'Henry Hudson' and the Explorer series

The Canadian 'Explorer roses' are a triumph of plant breeding, combining long blooming season with extreme hardiness.

They were bred by Dr Felicitas Svejda at the Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa. Svedja's work started in 1961 and lasted until her retirement in 1987.

Photo: Rose 'Henry Hudson'

Henry Hudson (after whom Hudson's bay is named) is a good example - it is a vigorous very free blooming rugosa. The buds are pink and the flowers open white. It is indestructible and excellent. Schneezwerg, from which it is derived, is in itself one of the best of the rugosas, bred in Germany by Lambert (1912). However, Henry Hudson is a better repeat flowerer.

The 26 "Explorer series" roses fall into two main groups:

• rugosa hybrids (e.g. 'Martin Frobisher', 'Henry Hudson', 'Jens Munk', 'David Thompson' and 'Charles Albanel')
• kordesii hybrids (e.g. 'William Baffin', 'Frontenac', 'Alexander Mackenzie' and 'Louis Jolliet')

The rugosas were the first to be bred using the Rosa rugosa cultivar "Schneezwerg" ("Snow Dwarf") and other rugosas. The resultant roses were all named after explorers of Canada.

The wingthorn rose, Rosa omeiensis f. pteracantha

The wingthorn rose (f. pteracantha from the Greek, pteryx = wing and acantha = thorn) is a large-prickled selection of R. omeiensis that is highly decorative. The young prickles are a rich red, turning purple and brown with age.

This form was named by Rehder and Wilson from E.H. ("Chinese") Wilson's collections in China. The trait (broad-based thorns) also occurs in the related R. sericea (as Rosa sericea forma pteracantha of Franchet). The close relationship between R. sericea and R. omeiensis has been commented on in another post.

When well-developed the prickles add decorative interest and seldom fail to draw comments from garden visitors.

The Mt Emei rose, Rosa omeiensis

Rosa omeiensis is an elegant early flowering rose known for its sprays of small creamy usually four-petalled flowers, ferny leaves with many leaflets and triangular prickles.

From Mt Emei in Sichuan came this variety. Mount Emei is one of the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism and at 3099 metres is the highest of the four. The others are Mt Wutai in Shanxi, Mt Jiuhua in Anhui and Mt Putuo in Zhejiang.

If Rosa omeiensis comes from Mt Emei, why is it not called "Rosa emeiensis"? The answer is simple, at the time it was discovered the standard romanization system for Chinese characters was the Wade-Giles, which renders the Chinese name Omei. However in the Pinyin system, standard today for the romanization of Mandarin Chinese, it is Emei.

It is generally considered a variety of Rosa sericea which ranges from northern India to central China and is quite variable. The Flora of China however keeps R. sericea and R. omeiensis separate. R. omeiensis has a more northerly distribution and more succulently fleshy fruits. The fleshy part of the hip often continues down into the pedicels of R. omeiensis, making the hips conspicuously pear-shaped, whereas the hip of R. sericea is globose with normal pedicels. Rosa sericea has fewer pairs of leaflets, which are densely sericeous beneath, whereas in R. omeiensis the leaflets are either glabrous or somewhat pubescent beneath. Large-prickled forms of both these roses occur.

The Wrath of the Roses

In 1910, storm clouds were beginning to gather over Europe, at least for those who could see them. The English had become so alarmed at increasing Prussian militarism, that in 1908 Kaiser Wilhelm declared the English "mad as hares" for harbouring suspicions of German intentions.

It is against this background then that we must see the 1910 publication by the English writer Gilbert Keith (G.K.) Chesterton (1874 - 1936) of a collection of essays entitled "Alarms and Discursions". One of these essays is a disquisition on the rose entitled "The Wrath of the Roses".

His essay concludes as follows:

"But the rose itself is royal and dangerous; long as it has remained in the rich house of civilization, it has never laid off its armour. A rose always looks like a mediaeval gentleman of Italy, with a cloak of crimson and a sword: for the thorn is the sword of the rose.

And there is this real moral in the matter; that we have to remember that civilization as it goes on ought not perhaps to grow more fighting - but ought to grow more ready to fight. The more valuable and reposeful is the order we have to guard, the more vivid should be our ultimate sense of vigilance and potential violence. And when I walk round a summer garden, I can understand how those high mad lords at the end of the Middle Ages, just before their swords clashed, caught at roses for their instinctive emblems of empire and rivalry. For to me any such garden is full of the wars of the roses."



Today, on the day after Osama bin Laden was located and slain by American forces deep inside Pakistan, this is food for thought indeed. We have a "valuable and reposeful order" to defend and the thorns, sadly, must stay on the rose.

Best rose books for the Amazon Kindle?

E-readers are becoming more popular and the Amazon Kindle is one of the leaders. Amazon also has a large store of e-books. What about rose books?

Roses are at the bottom of a deep pile of menus. Navigating through Lifestyle & Home > Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Flowers > Roses one finds a total of 112 books in this latter category. What riches! Well, actually no. Most are duds.

Almost all are aimed at providing the complete beginner with basic rose growing information. However, most of these are of very dubious provenance, churned out by the e-book twilight zone with odd names of publishers and odder author's pseudonyms. An amazing number have titles starting "101 tips…" no doubt because at some time starting with a numeral got them to the top of lists.

In all this dubious abundance where is the rosarian to turn? One of the few e-titles I have no difficulty recommending is "A Year of Roses" by Stephen Scanniello.

The author is a real rosarian of the highest order, he writes with clarity and light prose and the reader has the impression that they are getting the benefit of real hard-won experience. It is an excellent book for the beginner and even the experienced rose-grower can enjoy seeing roses through other eyes.

But Amazon should cleanse the Augean stable of the Kindle store and get some meaty rose titles installed.

The Lady Banks Rose - Rosa banksiae

When I was growing up in England we had a large double yellow Lady Banks' Rose (LBR) on the north side of our house. It is said to be a very tender rose and only to thrive on south facing walls, but this rose flowered prolifically on its north wall which must have been sheltered enough for its liking.

Perhaps because of this I have always had a soft spot for the LBR. However I rather prefer the double white and the single yellow to the double yellow, which looks a bit too much like the blossoms of the double Kerria for my taste. It is also the cultivar with the least strong scent. All the other varieties have an even stronger scent of violets.

The LBR comes in four varieties - the single white (presumably the original form), the single yellow, the double white and double yellow. Coming from Southern China they are none too hardy. One of the saddest sights is the small straggling LBR plant that grows in one of the hothouses of the Montreal Botanic Garden - it would not last five minutes outside in the winters of Montreal.

Arizona suits it better. Talking to a friend recently I was reminded of the incredible "Tombstone Rose" a double white LBR that was planted over 100 years ago and is now the largest rosebush in the world. An immigrant couple, a Scottish mining engineer and his wife brought material to Arizona from Scotland in the 1880s. The subsequent story of this amazing rose bush is well documented and very touching. Now it covers a whole yard and has an undisputed place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Originally found in Canton, the double white LBR was brought to Britain in 1807 by William Kerr and since then has made its way to many parts of the world.

Roses for Wet Sites

It is commonly written that roses are not for poorly drained sites. They hate getting their feet wet and growing them under wet conditions is a sure recipe for blackspot and disaster. Well, not so fast.

That may be true of garden roses with dry-loving Mediterranean species in their parentage, but actually a large group of North American wild roses are wetland plants, or at least occur in riparian (stream-bank) habitats. Rosa palustris, as its name implies is a trues swamp species, occurring in marshes, bogs, swamplands in eastern north America. The swamp rose of western north America is Rosa pisocarpa.

In the high rainfall areas of southern China roses must be tolerant of seasonal flooding and one of these is Rosa multiflora. Where this has been introduced into North American it has become a pest in wet riparian areas. Another Asian species that is adapted to wet subtropical conditions is Rosa clinophylla of Burma and Nepal.

The good news is that cultivated roses derived from these wild roses should be tolerant of at least seasonal wetness. Boggy gardens need not be rose-free.

Swamp roses of North America

• Rosa palustris
• Rosa pisocarpa

Wet-tolerant and riparian roses of North America

• Rosa virginiana
• Rosa nitida
• Rosa acicularis
• Rosa carolina
• Rosa woodsii

Wet-tolerant Asian roses

• Rosa multiflora
• Rosa clinophylla (monsoon climate of Burma)

The Roses of Henry Arthur Bright

Henry Arthur Bright (1830-1884), the author of "A Year in a Lancashire Garden" and "The English Flower Garden" worked in his family shipping firm while gardening at his home in Knotty Ash near Liverpool. His books on gardening were well loved due to their brevity and literary quality. Bright took up the cudgels against carpet bedding which had reached, in mid-Victorian times, absurd proportions. He is thus, along with William Robinson, one of the first "natural gardeners". He was also one of the few to recognize the writings of Forbes Watson and is therefore part of the curious chain from John Ruskin to William Robinson.

It is therefore of interest to see what roses he endorses in his "English Flower Garden" (1881). Unsurprisingly he harks back to many old English favourites at the expense of some contemporaneous roses, which by 1881 were reaching an apoapsis of artifice. To quote Bright:

"Then come roses, and we would strongly recommend that, in addition to the newer "remontant" roses, the old roses and the old way of growing them should not be quite forgotten. Standard roses are all very well, but a rose-bush covered over with blossom is very often much better. "Madame Rothschild" is pre-eminent in beauty, but (if she will tolerate the "odorous" comparison) the old cabbage rose or moss rose has a charm of scent and of association of which their fashionable rival is entirely devoid. The old pink china or monthly rose, which flowers on from early summer to latest autumn, deserves a bed to itself. It should be trained and pegged down, as is so constantly done in Belgium and Holland, and the blue lobelia should be planted in between. A bed of yellow briar rose is still more beautiful, but it lasts for weeks only instead of months. Other beautiful old summer roses are the maiden's blush, the Portland rose, the rose unique, and the rose Celeste. But no rose, taking all the good qualities of a rose together, its hardiness, free blooming, beauty, and scent, will surpass the Gloire de Dijon, though the golden cups of Marshal Niel may be richer in colour, and the fragrance of La France recalls, as no other rose does, the luscious fragrance of Oriental otto of roses".

These selections, of course, mirror the taste of Gertrude Jekyll as detailed in her book, the eponymous inspiration for this blog. We begin to see the threads gathering into her yarn.

The "odorous comparison" is a pointed dig, as Madame Rothschild has no scent and what is a rose without scent? Unique is the white form of the cabbage rose, Rosa centifolia, an old rose and like the pink cabbage rose guaranteed to take any eminent Victorian back to their childhood. Celeste, like Maiden's Blush is an old alba, one of the "cottage garden roses". Gloire de Dijon, an advanced noisette, was universally acclaimed the finest climbing rose of the nineteenth century. Miss Jekyll writes of it: "The most free-flowering of all climbing Roses, and for general usefulness has no equal".

Note: for more on Bright see Beverly Seaton's article "The Garden Writing of Henry Arthur Bright". Garden History, Vol. 10 (1982), pp. 74-79.

Is the single rose more beautiful that the double? Reflections on the work of Forbes Watson (1840-1869)

Poor Forbes Watson! During his final illness and before dying in agony aged 29 he comforted himself by writing about flowers and gardens. Then he gave the manuscript to a friend for posthumous publication. This slight work on aesthetics ("Flowers and Gardens") would be completely forgotten had it not formed a link in the chain between John Ruskin and William Robinson and inspired the "natural gardeners" who later turned Victorian formal gardening on its head. Drawing on Ruskin's principles of art and aesthetics, he was the first to rebel against carpet bedding and Victorian formalism.

There is a saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Forbes Watson believed the opposite. For him beauty was an objective, almost tangible quality, that God had placed in all flowers, like mass and density, for the observer to find, like some divine Easter egg hunt. Being devoutly religious the door to beauty through function, that Darwin had opened, was closed to him. He considered not the aesthetics of the bee. Whereas Darwin's beauty opened the human spirit to gigantic and majestic vistas, Forbes Watson's beauty came from sentimentality and the supernatural.

Canon Ellacombe described him thus:

"a man of unblemished character and pure life; an intense lover of truth, wherever he could find it, and a hater of shams and falsehoods of every sort; a warm friend, especially to the poor, to whom he was most liberal, even with limited means, and a labourer among them, teaching the boys, and sparing no labour to help them in leading good lives; a deeply religious man, to whom his religion was part of his life, and a very strong Noncomformist"

Roses were a particular problem to him, because he loved the double roses that man had created, the "deep warm bosom" of the cabbage rose and the moss, but were these roses of Man's creation better that the wild briars of God's? Heaven forbid! Imagining a stubborn interlocutor, he wrote:

'"But study the single rose as I may", you perhaps tell me, "I cannot like it much after the double one. I think it wants body, it seems loose and weak, and I really care little for it…these little points you mention, the stamens and the pistils, never enter my head for a moment; and I do not feel the want of them, they are wholly forgotten in that luxuriant fullness of beauty…"

The one thing really proved is this, that your taste is most seriously injured….though in turning to the Garden Rose I cannot feel it faulty any more than you do, I soon find that I miss something there; that is, I should soon be wearied if I had none but such Roses as these, and was absolutely debarred from the complete wild ones. And do you not see the reason of this, viz., that the beauties of the cultivated Rose are more especially of that sensuous striking kind which can hardly be overlooked, and are apt to veil in their blaze the simpler and less obtrusive, though more deeply satisfying, charms of the Wild Rose?'

Amen to that?

Questions about roses and rose growing

Do you have a question about roses or rose growing? This is the place to ask. Questions can be left as a comment on this entry. Click on the title of this post to open the comment box if you don't see it immediately.

Questions will be answered either as another comment or as a separate blog post if the answer requires one.

Hurst's rose genome complements (rose septets)

The amazing rose geneticist C.C. Hurst considered that five fundamental genomes (A, B, C, D, and E) made up the wild roses. These lists give the rose genomes according to Hurst.

MEIOSIS REGULAR

Genome - Hurst's name

• AA - R. anemoneflora
• AA - R. arvensis
• AA - R. banksiae
• AA - R. brunonii
• AA - R. chinensis
• AA - R. helenae
• AA - R. leschenaultiana
• AA - R. longicuspis
• AA - R. moschata
• AA - R. multiflora
• AA - R. rubus
• AA - R. setigera
• AA - R. soulieana
• AA - R. wichuraiana (R. lucieae)
• AABBEE - R. moyesii
• AABBEE - R. sweginzowii
• AACC - R. centifolia
• AACC - R. damascena
• AACC - R. rubra
• AACCDDEE - R. acicularis
• AACCEE - R. hemsleyana (R. setipoda)
• AADDEE - R. nutkana
• AADDEE - R. nuttalliana
• AAEE - R. davidii
• BB - R. cabulica
• BB - R. gymnocarpa
• BB - R. hugonis
• BB - R. omeiensis
• BB - R. sericea
• BB - R. sertata
• BB - R. webbiana
• BB - R. willmottiae
• BB - R. xanthina
• BBCC - R. myriacantha
• BBCC - R. spinosissima
• BBCCDDEE - R. baicalensis (R. acicularis p.p.)
• BBDD - R. altaica (R. spinosissima p.p.)
• BBDD - R. fedtschenkoana
• BBDD - R. grandiflora
• BBDD - R. pimpinellifolia (R. spinosissima p.p.)
• BBDDEE - R. engelmanii (R. acicularis p.p.)
• CC - R. nipponensis
• CC - R. nitida
• CC - R. rugosa
• CCDD - R. virginiana
• CCDDEE - R. sayi (R. acicularis p.p.)
• DD - R. beggeriana
• DD - R. bidenticulata
• DD - R. blanda
• DD - R. cinnamomea (R. majalis)
• DD - R. fendleri (R. woodsii)
• DD - R. johnstonii
• DD - R. marettii
• DD - R. palustris
• DD - R. woodsii
• DDEE - R. hawrana
• DDEE - R. laxa
• DDEE - R. pendulina
• EE - R. corymbulosa
• EE - R. elegantula (R. persetosa)
• EE - R. giraldii
• EE - R. macrophylla
• EE - R. persetosa

MEIOSIS IRREGULAR

These roses with unbalanced genomes have the remarkable dogrose system of meiosis

Genome - Hurst's name

• AABCD - R. agrestis
• AABCE - R. micrantha
• AABDE - R. canina
• AACDE - R. mollissima (R. tomentosa)
• ABBCD - R. eglanteria (R. rubiginosa)
• ABBCDE - R. inodora
• ABBCE - R. elliptica (R. graveolens)
• ABCDD - R. pseudo-mollis
• ABDDE - R. glaucophylla
• ACCDE - R. uriensis
• ACDDE - R. caesia (R. coriifolia)
• ACDEE - R. froebelii
• ADDE - R. glauca (R. rubrifolia)
• CCDE - R. pomifera (R. villosa)
• CDDE - R. mollis

The decaploid Shangri-La Rose, Rosa praelucens

Up until recently the highest chromosome number known in roses was octoploid (2n=8x=56). C.C. Hurst had hypothesised that all roses derive from a theoretical Arctic decaploid (2n=10x=70), from which he theorised all other roses descend by progressive loss of chromosome complements. This decaploid was never found.

However, it is now established that a rose found on the Zhongdian Plateau of China is decaploid. This high plateau (over 3000m elevation) in Yunnan is the gateway to the Tibetan plateau. It has a stunningly rich flora, although the natural ecosystems have been severely damaged by yak and cattle overgrazing.

On this plateau grows the decaploid Rosa praelucens, the Shangri-La Rose, an elegant rose with large solitary pink to red flowers and leaves with small hairy leaflets.

Is this the ancestral decaploid of Hurst? No, Hursts theory is still wrong. Instead of having chromosomes of all five of Hurst's fundamental rose types (his "septets") it appears to be a specialised Chinese rose, possibly sharing a hybrid origin with Rosa roxburghii, the Chestnut Rose, which it slightly resembles. The Flora of China classifies both the Chestnut Rose and the Shangri-La Rose in section Microphyllae as they both have a depressed-globose hypanthium with achenes inserted at projecting torus at the base.

See: Jian, H. et al. (2010). Decaploidy in Rosa praelucens Byhouwer (Rosaceae) Endemic to Zhongdian Plateau, Yunnan, China. Caryologia 63: 162-167.

The American Noisettes

It is well known that the original noisette rose was an American production. The story is often told of John Champney of Charleston, SC crossing a musk and a china rose, creating Champney's Pink Cluster. A seedling of this his friend and neighbour Philippe Noisette sent to France in 1814, where it became known as the "Noisette" rose. The Noisette was taken up by the French hybridisers who crossed them with tea roses to create some of the iconic roses of the 19th century.

What is sometimes overlooked is how much further development of the noisettes went on in America. This was mainly due to the fact that in the warm summers of the American south-east the early noisettes frequently set seed and these seedlings increased the diversity of the group. In this story some notable American rosarians stand out:

James Pentland

From 1843 Pentland was gardener at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. Later he purchased land near the cemetery to set up his own nursery. Pentland prospered and in 1868 he was elected Representative for Baltimore City to the Maryland House of Delegates. His best known noisette roses were:

• Beauty of Green Mount (1854) "rich, brilliant carmine color, very large and double";
• Dr. Kane (1856) "with large yellow flowers";
• Woodland Marguerite (1859) "large, pure white, and double, free blooming, with a lilac fragrance".

Charles Grafton Page

Page (1812-1868) was an inventor and professor of chemistry in Washington DC, as well as a notable amateur rosarian. His roses included:

• America (distributed by Thomas G. Ward, 1859) "flowers large, creamy yellow, with a salmon tinge; a cross from Solfaterre and Safrano"
• Cinderella (1859) "rosy crimson".

Andrew Gray

Gray was foreman of the Buist nursery firm in Philadelphia before setting up on his own in Charleston SC around 1849. He raised at least two noisettes:

• Isabella Gray, named after his eldest daughter, a seedling from Cloth of Gold
• Jane Hardy (named after his wife) also a seedling from Cloth of Gold. According to Rivers this is: "like the old double yellow rose, its buds burst without opening".

Anthony Cook

Of Cook little appears to be know except he came from Baltimore. He raised two noisettes:

• Nasaliana (1872) "flowers pink, of flat form, very fragrant; a seedling from Desprez".
• Tuseneltea (1860) "Pale yellow; a seedling from Solfaterre".

Of these American seedlings few, if any, survive. This is in contrast to the French noisettes, such as Cloth of Gold (1841), Desprez and Lamarque which are still available today.

A great rosarian - Bertram Park

Photograph: Bertram Park, self-portrait with roses, c. 1950.

It sometimes comes as a surprise that great rosarians have a life behind the roses. Bertram Park, OBE, VMH (1883-1972) was one such man. In his 60s and 70s Park was a famous rosarian of stupendous authority, but as a young man in his 30s and 40s he was fêted as a photographer. He was considered avant garde and associated with the modern movement. Some of his numerous studies of the female nude rise to great art - although many are coyly romantic and trivial.

He turned to photography having studied art and music and in 1916 married Yvonne Gregory, a fellow photographer and miniature painter. In 1919 they opened a studio with Marcus Adams at 43 Dover Street, London (with the financial backing of the noted egyptologist Lord Carnarvon).

During the 1920s and 30s he was a sought-after society photographer. In 1926 he photographed the future King George VI when Duke of York, and in 1936 was commissioned to take the royal portraits for all the Royal Mail stamps.

However it is his photographs of the female nude for which he is best known. It may have come as a surprise to his royal sitters and nude models that while he was photographing them he was probably thinking of roses, which were the overweening passion of his life.

Between 1926 and 1936 he published several volumes of nude studies which seem to have been successful, as after the second world war he was able to devote himself increasingly to roses and rose growing.

He became a long-time council member (from 1931), and eventually president, of the Royal National Rose Society. He not only edited the Rose Society's "Rose Annual" for some time, but he also published prolifically on the cultivation of the rose between 1949 and 1962.

The following notes on his personal rose growing are from the jacket of the Collins Guide to Roses:

"His first rose garden was made at Hendon in 1917, but finding it was too small to accommodate all the roses he wished to grow, he moved to Wisborough Green in Sussex, where he grew about 5,000 and collected about 150 different rose species. Wartime difficulties caused him to leave his country home, and for over two years he lived in a London flat. His interest in roses, however, proved more than he could bear, and he moved to Pinner, where in 1942, he made his third garden, in which he grows about 3,000 roses. This time the soil is light sandy loam, which he finds much easier to work than the Sussex clay."

Any true gardener who has been forced by circumstance to spend time without a garden will sympathise with his wartime move to the London suburb of Pinner, borne out of desperation to surround himself with roses.

Books on Roses by Bertram Park

• Roses (1949)
• Roses: a select list and guide to pruning (1952)
• Roses: hints on planting and general cultivation (1954)
• Collins guide to roses (1956)
• Roses: a selected list of varieties [ed. B. Park] (1958)
• Roses: the cultivation of the rose (1958)
• The world of roses (1962)

Photographic Books

• Living sculpture: A record of expression in the human figure (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1926)
• Eve in the sunlight (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, n.d. [c. 1930])
• Sun bathers (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1935)
• The beauty of the female form (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1935)
• Curves and contrasts of the human figure (Gregory, Yvonne and Bertram Park, 1936)
• A Study of Sunlight and Shadow on the Female Form: For Artists and Art Students (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1939)

Who was Antonia Ridge?

Antonia Ridge wrote two well-loved popular rose books. They are the biography of Pierre-Joseph Redouté (The Man Who Painted Roses, 1974, Faber and Faber) and the story of the Peace rose - a biography of the Meilland family (For Love of a Rose, 1965, Faber and Faber).

These books seem dated now, written in a breathless style that once characterised popular biography, intent on placing the reader as a confidant of the subject. The struggles and triumphs of the Meilland family are imbued with immense nobility. The pettiness of everyday life is not allowed to obtrude, and the modern reader - used to a bit of modern muckraking in biographies - perhaps feels short-changed.

The style may be out of fashion but it does make for a riveting read. I read "The Man Who Painted Roses" as a teenager, having been given it as a Christmas present, and was captivated. Nearly 40 years later I have recently read "For Love of a Rose". Once one accepts that this is cosy hagiography rather than cinema verité, you have to admit that Antonia Ridge weaves a rollicking good yarn.

The internet is full of her books. They went through many printings and are commonly offered second hand. However the internet has remarkably little to say about the author.

It turns out that there was a lot more to Dutch-born Antonia Ridge (1895 – 1981). She was a broadcaster associated with Children's Hour for which she wrote and read children's plays. She was a librettist, translating the children's songs of Friedrich-Wilhelm Möller (The Happy Wanderer, The Wooden Horse, The Emperor and the Nightingale). And she was a noted childrens' author, translating European children's tales into English. She wrote many, many books including collections of short stories such as "The Handy Elephant" (1946) and "Rom Bom Bom" (1963).

And it is her success as a children's author that gives the clue to the success of her two rose biographies. They are children's stories for adults, and we love them for it.

Rose "Scarlet Meidiland"

Rosa "Meikrotal" (trademarked as "Scarlet Meidiland") is an extraordinary rose.

One of the new breed of landscape roses bred by the House of Meilland in France, it has flowers of such vivid scarlet intensity that it is difficult to photograph. It was released in 1988 and has been widely planted since then.

It is tolerant of winter cold and summer heat and resistant to pests and diseases. These qualities make it a good rose for mass planting along roadways etc.

The photograph here is one I took last summer in a heatwave: no rose symbolises summer heat better that this one.

The scent of roses in winter

Now winter is in its depths one great pleasure when viewing the barren landscape around is conjuring in the mind the scents of summer roses.

A little science

Rose scent is manufactured in the floral parts (petals usually, sometimes stamens) and released from specialised epidermal cells. The scent compounds (the so-called rose oils) are aromatic chemicals such as the rose monoterpenoids (e.g. geraniol) and rose ketones (e.g. damascenone). However there are very large numbers of chemicals that go to making rose scent, which accounts for the complexity and depth of the scent. In different roses these scents occur in differing proportions so giving the great variety of scents to be found in diverse rose varieties.

There are three major types of rose scent:

1. the classic Rosa gallica scent. In this the most abundant component is usually geraniol, as in the scented geranium (Pelargonium graveolens), and other deliciously fruity aromatic compounds;
2. the musk rose scent, a heavier scent of carotenoid-derived compounds
3. the tea rose scent, restricted to the china roses and their descendants. An important component of this tea scent is orcinol dimethyl ester [also known as 3,5-dimethoxytoluene]. Recent studies have shown that this is made by two enzymes, unique to tea roses, which methylate orcinol, first to orcinol monomethyl ester and then to orcinol dimethyl ester. The acquisition of these enzymes was therefore a crucial step in the evolution of the china roses.

The great rosarian G.S. Thomas wrote about roses with distinctive scents. Among these he mentions:

• Rosa bracteata - lemon
• Polyantha grandiflora - orange
• Adam Messerich - raspberry
• Vanity - sweet pea
• Ayrshire Splendens, Constance Spry - myrrh
• Fritz Nobis - cloves
• Lavender Lassie - lilac

These could all be due to a single dominant chemical. Orange and lemon scents are both due to the chemical limonene (different forms of the same chemical give orange or lemon). A raspberry scent might indicate the presence of raspberry ketone (hydroxyphenyl butanone). Sweet pea fragrance is due to the abundant production of linalool by sweet peas, the "rose myrrh" fragrance is said to be due to vinyl anisole, clove scent to eugenol, while a lilac scent might indicate the presence of the lilac aldehydes.

A rich and fragrant field of study!

Hurst's decaploid theory for the origin of rose species: wrong but not forgotten

C.C. Hurst (1870-1947) was the brilliant amateur geneticist who did more that anyone to elucidate the tangled history of the rose. He confirmed that the basic chromosome number of roses was 7 and he distinguished 5 rose genomes, A, B, C, D and E, each associated with a set of seven rose chromosomes. Diploid roses have chromosomes in pairs so they may be represented as AA or BB etc.

The basic building blocks of rose evolution are these diploids:

• the AA diploids: the odorata group (R. odorata, R. brunonii, R. moschata, R. multiflora etc)
• the BB diploids: the hugonis group (R. hugonis, R. wilmottiae, R. sericea)
• the CC diploids: the rugosa group (R. rugosa)
• the DD diploids: the woodsii group (R. woodsii, R. nitida, R. blanda etc)
• the EE diploids: the macrophylla group (R. macrophylla)

Roses exist not only as diploids but as tetraploids, pentaploids, hexaploids and octoploids. These can all be seen to be derived from the diploids by appropriate duplication and hybridisation. Thus Rosa nutkana and Rosa moyesii are both hexaploids but Rosa moyesii is (according to Hurst) AABBEE and Rosa nutkana is AADDEE. This is the accepted "upwards" theory of rose origins in which the polyploids derive from the diploids by chromosome doubling and hybridisation.

However, somewhat incredibly Hurst did not believe this. He put forward another theory: the decaploid theory. In this "downwards" theory roses derive from a hypothetical arctic decaploid AABBCCDDEE by progressive loss of genomes, ending up with diploids that have lost all their genomes except one!

No-one believed Hurst then and no-one believes him now. The upwards theory is based on mechanisms that are well attested in hundreds of groups of organisms, and is based on the diploids, all of which still exist. The downwards theory is based on a hypothetical decaploid that no-one has ever found and requires a mechanism that has never been demonstrated in any group.

So why did Hurst put forward his bizarre theory? He gives a variety of reasons:

1. the doubling of a sterile AB hybrid to give a AABB tetraploid would result in a homozygous plant whereas the roses are heterozygous.
2. the diploids occur in different habitats and regions and are not geographically available in the precise pairs necessary for hybridisation.
3. Hurst worked on the idea that polyploids were adapted to higher altitudes or higher latitudes than their diploid progenitors, therefore the polyploids would have to migrate northwards or up mountains very quickly in order to find habitat to which they were fitted.
4. Hurst also worked under the now defunct theory that the flora of the northern hemisphere had an arctic origin. Therefore it made more sense for arctic polyploids to become tropical diploids rather than vice versa.
5. Hurst thought that a single origin from one decaploid progenitor species was more parsimonious that multiple origins from multiple diploid species.

Today we can see that all these arguments are based on false assumptions. However, I don't mean to belittle Hurst because his theory proved to be false: he was a giant of genetics, who came up with a brilliant if erroneous theory: wrong but not forgotten.

[For a full list of Hurst's rose genomes see this link]

The artless pruner

Rose pruning often occupies a large section of rose books but all the advice boils down to:

• Shrub roses and climbers don't need pruning except to keep them in check, and some larger roses are best with light trimming only.
• Floribundas and hybrid teas should be pruned hard in early March (i.e. well before budbreak), in order to encourage the production of a few very vigorous shoots the following year which will bloom abundantly.
• "Pruning hard" means reducing last year's shoots to about four, each about 6 inches long with 3 or four buds.
• Cut 1/4 of an inch above a bud, with a sloping cut, sloping down away from the bud.
• Cut above an outward facing bud.
• Remove entirely dead wood and weak shoots; eliminate crossing or inward facing branches, giving an open centre.

And that is it. Or is it?

Many books obsess about the minutiae of pruning. A few years ago a British consumer magazine ran a test on rose pruning techniques, subjecting identical beds either to so-and-so's pruning method X or to thingummyjig's pruning method Y. And as a control, one bed was just run over with an electric hedge-clipper. The roses were then assessed in the summer to see which pruning method gave the best bloom.

Come the summer there was no difference at all. If anything the massacre with the electric clipper came out on top.

This sort of anecdote is music to the ears of all those interested in reviving the rose hedge, but do who not want to have to surgically prune a long hedge. David JC Austin has pioneered the modern rose hedge using his family's English Roses. He has used the fantastic, very vigorous "Hyde Hall" rose as a hedge, trimming it back to "half its size each year using a hedge trimmer".

Rose pruning has not come much further than the recommendations of Mrs Gore in 1838 (see below), except we now have the mechanical hedge trimmer!

From: THE ROSE FANCIER'S MANUAL; BY MRS. GORE (1838)

"OF PRUNING AND TRIMMING. Some gardeners prepare their rose-trees for spring-pruning by a preparatory one in the autumn; which is superfluous, except for the sake of neatness. The tree should be subjected to the pruning knife early in the month of March; and all dead, sickly, or unsightly branches carefully removed. The shoots of the preceding years should be trimmed down to the second eye, in order to secure fine flowers. A few species, however, require to have longer branches allowed; while others need only be trimmed of their sprays to produce an abundance of flowers. On this point, experience is the only guide; for the extent of pruning and trimming depends, not only upon the species of rose, but upon the situation, soil, and even the temperature of the season.

When it is desirable to retard the flowering of a rose-tree by two or three weeks, it should not be pruned till the vegetation has commenced, and the shoots have attained an inch in length."