Old Roses in Calvert County, Maryland
By MRS. FREDERICK L. KEAYS, Great Neck, L. I., N. Y.

EDITOR's NOTE: Here is recorded some excellent research work among the roses of an olden day. Mrs. Keays has shown us in this article how to go about the business of identifying old roses, and has indicated the most reliable authorities and sources of information.

HE photographs facing pages 104 and 105 are front and back views of a few of the rare old roses we have been able to identify in the country round about our Maryland farm. I submit them because I want to be correct, and if our deductions from the characteristics displayed are wrong, someone seeing the pictures may be able to set us right.
     We have found many more old roses here than I ever expected-a hundred or more kinds, I think, without counting those which have not bloomed-and seem to be Hybrid Chinas, Hybrid Bourbons, and Hybrid Musks or Musks. They must wait for further study.
     The research story is bound to be dry and uninteresting to some people, but actually it is as thrilling as any detective story ever written, only it is so much better because you, yourself, have to be the detective, and your material includes only sketchy descriptions in unfamiliar languages, your own observation, and the really superb illustrations of Redouté, Mary Lawrance, Miss Kingsley, Jamain and Forney, and other faithful artists of an older day, who devoted so much loving effort to render their subjects with meticulous fidelity.

I.  NOISETTES

     Across St. Leonard's Creek from our farm is an old plantation where, long before the war of the states, there grew under the pantry window an old rose called the Faded Pink Monthly. Before the war, the cook took a cutting from this rose and grew it near her cabin door.
     During our searchings through old gardens in our part of Calvert County for old roses to grow on our place, Lillie, this cook's daughter, who is now our cook on the farm, showed us the way to the old plantation to see if we could get something

(102)

from the original rose. It proved to be entirely gone-not a trace left. Years ago, Lillie had carried her mother's rose plant to her home when she married. It had suffered some during late years but had pulled along. A tough old dear! When .we were disappointed in our search for the original, Lillie gave us her old rose, hesitatingly, as she thought it would die. So we acquired the rose grown by her mother before the war, a plant "slipped" before 1860. A wonderful gift!
     It was a very large, very woody stump with a sparse top. We pruned and planted it very carefully with shelter and old richness bedded below to coax it. The fine old grandmother rewarded our care so generously that during the summer of 1930 it grew ample top to furnish us with cuttings in November from which we have grown several new plants. One of these cuttings, with the autumn bloom of this year, is shown in the illustration facing page 104.
     To identify the Faded Pink Monthly teased us through many months of real study. All we surely knew was that it had a fragrance not like a China or Tea, that it resembled the China bloom, that it flowered in immense clusters, and that it was old.      Carrying our notes and holding fast and hard to our descriptions of bush, foliage, bloom, and general habit, we made repeated visits to the New York Public Library, where we studied those beautiful volumes, "Les Roses," written by Thory and illustrated by Redouté. After we had run down the Chinas to repeated disappointment, for we thought it was some sort of China,-we went after the early Noisettes, the early ones which we had not known, our Noisette acquaintance, hitherto, having been confined to Maréchal Niel and other later varieties into which the Tea cross had been introduced.      The story of the Noisette is interestingly told by the authors of 1817 to 1870. Mr. Nicolas has repeated it in his recent book, "The Rose Manual." He writes, "The Noisette has an interesting history since it probably is the first strain originated in America. By fertilizing the Musk variety, Rosa moschata alba, with the Bengal rose, John Champneys, of Charleston, S. C., obtained a variety called `Champneys' Pink Cluster.' A few years later, Philippe Noisette, from seeds of this variety, produced several perpetual-blooming hybrids which he sent to his