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 moyesii hips in December

The red flowered Rosa moyesii Hemsley & E.H. Wilson is a great rose in the summer, but it comes into its own in fall with its large flagon-shaped, sparsely bristled hips.

It is named after the missionary James Moyes (1876-1930) who worked in China - as head of the "China Inland Mission" - and hosted E.H. Wilson who refound the rose in 1903 (it had been first introduced by A.E. Pratt in 1894). As a mark of gratitude Wilson named the rose after Moyes when he described it with William Botting Hemsley.

The leaves are rather delicate with many small leaflets. It is a large shrub and one that Hillier's manual states is "one of the most beautiful roses in cultivation".

The mysterious origin of Mr Doncaster's Rose

Rosa "Doncasteri" is a particularly good form of Rosa macrophylla, the big hip rose.

Graham Stuart Thomas (one of the all time great rosarians) gives the origin of this rose as follows:

"A form of Rosa macrophylla put on the market between the wars by Mr Doncaster of Messrs J. Burrell and Co. of Cambridge, but probably one of Dr Hurst's seedlings. It has narrower, darker green leaves than the type, and smaller darker flowers and a less free and graceful habit. Its chief glory is the sumptuous display of large red, flagon-shaped hips in early autumn." - The Graham Stuart Thomas Rose Book (1994).

Graham Stuart Thomas studied in the University Botanical Garden in Cambridge and therefore knew Dr C.C. Hurst (1870-1947) the rose geneticist with close connections to Cambridge. When he ascribes this rose to Dr Hurst he is likely right. That Hurst worked on this plant is beyond doubt because he published chromosome details (diploid, 2n=14) in his "The Mechanism of Creative Evolution" of 1932.

But what is Rosa "Doncasteri" and how did it arise? Probably the best guess is that it is a hybrid between R. macrophylla and some other, unknown, diploid species, and it is sometimes written as Rosa x doncasteri to indicate that fact. Whatever the origin, the hips and dark flowers make it an excellent garden plant.