Growing in one bed in Great Neck are three related roses, York and Lancaster, Damascena, the Gallica-Damascena hybrid Hébé's Lip or Reine Blanche, and the Alba-Damascena hybrid Queen of Denmark. York and Lancaster, a rose of the time of Shakespeare, with soft pale green leaflets, green wood, pale red prickles, long oval hip with glands and long sepals, makes a tall somewhat spreading bush. Hébé's Lip has the heavy Damascena set of prickles, foliage somewhat smaller and less soft, a more upright growth, with a flower of Gallica form and fullness, creamy white with a pencil edge of carmine on the petals. No one seems to know a thing about the history of this hybrid. That it was called Reine Blanche is interesting although it may have nothing to do with its history. When Mary Stuart, the young queen of France, was mourning the death of her youthful king-husband, she mourned completely in white from head to foot. They called her "La Reine Blanche." They say "never was she more fair." In her whiteness she must have been like this rose.
     Queen of Denmark --no one says which queen--has the pale leaves and pubescence, the green wood and large hooked prickles of Damascena, with a bloom of form and color to be attributed to Alba. On Long Island it grows into a spreading bush about five feet high. In Virginia it grows at least another foot. In the mountains of New York state where temperatures go to forty below, it makes no more than three feet. Evidently the length of the growing season is something to consider in judging the height of rose bushes, but that is comparative.
     Another June-blooming form, different from the four early garden kinds although taken for Centifolia sometimes, has been coming into the daylight. I have bushes from the upper Hudson valley and from the east end of Long Island where the Connecticut colonials crossed Long Island Sound and re-settled themselves. This past summer the same sort came from Massachusetts. I think these are Frankfort roses. The Frankfort rose (R. Francofurtana), originating in a spontaneous cross of Gallica and Cinnamomea, according to what we read, was discovered and written about by Clusius. It was taken to England from the continent and we know that its descendants, if not its first form, existed here because we find William Prince, of

Flushing, listed a few varieties for sale in 1846, among them, "Frankfort (old variety)." The general description of the Frankfort is as a vigorous, thick, shrubby bush, growing in the bending way of Damascena. New shoots, courageously upright, have strong, unequal prickles, many of which drop off as age hardens the shoot. Leaflets may be five, are more often seven and maybe nine. Petiole is hairy, sometimes glandulous and on the same bush, with or without little prickles, but always the petiole is chanelled above. Stipules are large and widely spread, held flat. Bracts are large, wide, oval, pointed rather bluntly. The striking feature is that while the branchlets which bear the flowers are smooth,or have a very occasional prickle, the peduncle of the rose itself is covered with reddish glandular hairs which extend onto the lower part of the turbinate calyx tube. Sepals are long, beyond the bloom, winged, with tips often charmingly foliated. The double pink blooms, on long stems, come in clusters,--when they do,--for the roses ball badly, fade out, hang on, looking very sad.
     A hundred years ago there were some varieties, among them one called "Inermis" because the branchlets. were thornless. Of these varieties, Redouté has some plates in color. The rose which has turned up has pinkish red in the young foliage and somewhat larger blooms, in which particulars it seems to check with a later variety named Ancelin, described by Mrs. Gore in 1836 and listed by Prince in 1846. Hope that more of these roses with the turbinate calyx maybe found lies in their tenacity to survive. They require no culture, grow in any soil that will grow a wild rose, and get along in shade or sunshine.
     The turbinate calyx occurs in another rose much more widely spread--the Alba, variety Rubicunda, where lies the ancient rose Maiden's Blush. In this group the deep blue-green of Alba gives way and the foliage is pale and not positively blue. To say that we really have the rose Parkinson described as R. incarnata, known later as Cuisse de Nymphe or Maiden's Blush, would not be quite right, as in.all these years many cultural variations have been known. The bush grows from four to six feet, depending on circumstances, but always arches. Bark is a light dullish green with prickles uniform, scattered, generally falcate. Leaflets seven, oblong, obtuse, smooth above, pubes-