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.