T IS a beautiful mid-October
day. In the rose-beds, Tea roses, Chinas, the faithful old Souvenir de la
Malmaison, the Blush Noisette and her cousins, Fellemberg and Aimée
Vibert, the single Hybrid Teas, of which Innocence and Dainty Bess are
favorites, are adding their precious bit of glory to the end of the rose
season. The June-blooming roses, are a memory, Made unforgettable by what they
gave us in their high time, not only of the old familiar garden sorts which
Shakespeare loved and wrote about but other old ones.The particular inspiration has been, for quite a time, the study of early, hybrid roses. It is in the interest of old rose observation and identification--if possible--that I sit here at an upstairs window and work at the typewriter, trying to keep my eyes and my thoughts from straying into the garden.
These hybrid roses, are not ancients, in the way of the Shakespeare roses. They are largely about a century old. As a result of the impetus given to rose-growing by the Empress Josephine's garden at Malmaison, there came a flood of June-flowering roses which were hybrids. However, they were not the first variations from the garden roses of Shakespeare's time, when roses were so limited in numbers. During the decades between these time--Shakespeare's and Josephine's--the varieties of roses grown in gardens moved slowly toward a hundred, counting out the wild roses which were not considered as garden material. The Cinnamon rose had been introduced into England from Europe and probably into America. Centifolia had developed a white sport, and the Moss rose had developed new shades of pink . Rosa alba had added the delicately tinted Maiden's Blush variety at some ancient date. R. damascena had taken on the monthly-blooming habit which probably was not very consistent, as well as a certain color-range. The Frankfort rose had reached England and perhaps America. R. gallica had produced the Velvet rose, single and double.
There were others, but these are enough to show that already new forms had appeared and roses were attracting attention. The Malmaison collection awakened a sudden popularity for the rose which was in itself a demand for more and more kinds of roses. Garden groups were mixed together; results came rapidly, and new varieties were speedily spread abroad. In old gardens, here, dating back to those years, these hybrids are met. They seem to outnumber the surviving type forms and the earliest variations. That is not difficult to understand. The first fifty years of the last century were years of great expansion.
These surviving hybrids present problems in identification because, they display in their physical features that they are partly one kind and partly another, or even two others. And so they are. Rarely, however, are they lacking a dominating set of features. The problem is to work out what kind dominates, and by this dominance of a kind to classify. Often there shows up some outstanding characteristic such as velvety petals, peculiar shadings, stripes, picotee edges, waxy petals, definite or unusual fragrance, great neatness of petal arrangement, or a marked irregularity, as in old Cinnamon rose. There might be an excess of prickles or an absence of them, as in the Boursault roses. Moss on a Moss rose may be reddish or brownish instead of green, or lacking glands, the moss may have the form of crests of bristles as in R. centifolia cristata. Foliage may have a distinguishing color, may have or not have pubescence,
may have a matty or a
glistening surface. Such details are aids.Very few records exist of roses used to create new varieties, and these cannot always be assured. I remember reading in some old book that the breeder recognized that even though he deliberately put the pollen of one rose upon the stigma of another, his results might be influenced by some other impregnating factor. Recourse in solving the problem is to the plant itself, and this is not a new idea. A hundred years ago nurserymen who grew roses for the trade and classified their hybrids for their catalogues had to do what we try to do. Fortunately, we have, as they had, the early forms of old garden species to guide us; the old Cabbage Rose, Centifolia, and the Common Moss; the rose-red Gallica; the Damascena; the Double Alba, Rose of the House of York. These roses can be studied as to height, foliage, prickles, blooms, calyces, fragrance and seedhips. Often, perhaps always, the bush will tell us more in these hybrids: than the blooms will. Gallica-Centifolia crosses make up: more than half of the, new roses of a hundred years ago. If the check of dominant points shows that Centifolia dominates, we call the bush a Centifolia, even though it may not have the knotted-up center of, the Cabbage, as in the cupped anemone-like form of the pink Shailer's Provence. If, on the other hand, Gallica predominates, as it did in more than half of these particular crosses, we call the bush a Gallica.
In the old rose called Bishop which prevails widely in southern Maryland, the two species Centifolia and Gallica are so closely balanced that it was called in the old days a Gallica by some authorities and a Centifolia by others. However, the bush is so tall, prickles are mixed weak and strong, blooms are so full, that it would seem reasonable to consider that those features overbalance the smaller, tougher foliage and the lovely red and purple color of the bloom which could have come only from Gallica partnership. A white Damascena, Mme. Hardy, lacks the pubescence on the foliage and has a full, flat bloom much resembling Centifolia, but looks at you with a green eye.
There may be three of these old pensioners, within a hybrid, even four, yet one old constituent will hold the mastery. It has been stated that dominance of a sort will hold for three or four generations of crossing. Some features are hard to crack! We can see that in modern roses. In the newest Rugosa hybrids, rating only 20 per cent Rugosa, the persistent character of Rugosa foliage has been creacked by the Hybrid Teas bred into them. At first glance these new Rugosas look like very large Hybrid Tea bushes with a heavy armament of prickles. Evidently the Rugosa prickles remain the most persistent individual feature, hardest to disturb. If you look hard you can see the foliage and flower form of Frau Karl Druschki in many of the newest Hybrid Perpetuals. Foliage of Gloire des Rosomanes can be seen in some new red roses; see Wichuraiana in the growth and foliage of the new Brownell Climbers.
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, pubescent beneath, on a petiole, pubescent, not glandular, occasionally with a prickle or two, but with a fine thread-like channel above, not always to the full length as in the Frankfort. Flowers are in a corymb, of medium size, flesh-pink with white edges, about double, with petaloids among the stamens. There is a distinctive scent which seems indescribable. I find in my notebook, "Fragrance. Yes, but I do not know what it is." Both the peduncle and frequently the calyx-tube are bristly, not glandular, with sepals long, winged, deciduous. Fruit seldom sets here. Within the Alba group, variety Rubicunda, lie three very old roses, Maiden's Blush, a smaller sized bloom in lesser clusters, the Great Maiden's Blush with blooms three inches across in greater clusters, both blush with white edges, and the rose Celestial, of a deeper shade of pink. The Maiden's Blush roses have a blunt calyx-tube, like a thimble, while the Celestial has a sort of urn-shaped calyx-tube.
In descriptive words, Frankfort and the above seem quite alike. Eyes disprove that. The Frankfort is a darkish green, rough-and-ready looking bush; like a good working dirt gardener. The pink Alba indelicately green, at this time taking on a lovely autumn salmon color. The bush is lady-like, pastellish; neat and clean. Both are tough and enduring.
These variables of the old Elizabethan garden roses are, however, not the only problems to be found in gardens of a hundred years ago. From 1789, when the two China roses, pink and red, were introduced, another line of hybridizing was going on. From 1817, when the Bourbon and the Noisette came in, the use of them added something. In the early part of the last century, rosemen had not only the June-blooming kinds, but, as well, four everblooming kinds to play with. They mixed them up this way and that, with the result that they cracked the everblooming feature but kept the distinguishing marks of China, Bourbon and Noisette in their new varieties. They were set apart as a class, called Hybrid Chinas, and within the class, Hybrid Bourbons and Hybrid Noisettes were recognized. If you have an especially handsome floriferous China rose bush which just will not bloom but once a season, it is a fair bet that you have one of these lost roses. (The Hybrid Perpetual which will not come again is a nuisance here.)
Rivers' George the Fourth is evidently the most frequent survivor. The dark red tinting of the bark, of the foliage and prickles of new shoots is very noticeable. Bushes here grow to six feet, newer shoots are upright, older ones bend. The smooth, lovely leaves, the bark and scattered prickles are from the China ancestor, probably the red one. Roses are richly red shaded with purple and almost black (Gallica?) ; double, stamens and pistils intact but hidden by curling petals. Thomas Rivers tells in his "Rose Amateur's Guide" how he discovered the plant in a bed of seedlings.
Foliage somewhat thicker, rounder, a little tougher than that of the China roses, green bark with bristles among the prickles, show the Bourbon content of another survivor, Coupe d'Hébè. This lovely. rose blooms in about the most perfectly cupped form one could imagine, of a color as purely pink as Hermosa. Here Coupe d'Hébè .makes a bush about six feet tall, with bark, prickles, bristles and foliage all of a medium shade of green. Dean Hole broke into ecstatic prose about it.
The only variety so far recognized as a Noisette hybrid is Mme. Plantier, a bushy, floriferous familiar rose. Shoots are slender and branching; foliage is rather small, light green in color. Blooms, coming in clusters, are not very large, full, creamy on opening, soon going purely white. R. alba might be an ancestor. So, possibly might be Aimée Vibert, Noisette.
Of the few that have been recognized as survivors of what was once:. quite a large, group, more red Hybrid Chinas have been discovered than any other one color. They ranged from `white .to deep colors. It is to be hoped that more will be found.
The roses we call everblooming--Teas, Chinas, Bourbons and Noisettes--are not always "open books" when found in old gardens. Teas were crossed with Chinas. Bourbons and Noisettes were hybrids at the start. They were mixed with Teas and Chinas. The old Tea Sombreuil is somewhat Bourbon. Tea rose is apparent in such Noisettes as Lamarque, Maréchal Niel and Chromatella. However, just as in the June-roses, these everblooming ones fall into the classes of Teas, Chinas, Bourbons, and Noisettes, according the dominating characteristics. What is called the true Noisette, to distinguish it from the Tea-Noisette, is the small-flowered, heavily clustering form.
The true Noisette may be a four- to five-foot bush or an arching Climber. Aimée Vibert has both habits. The Musk ancestor shows through in the long, acute leaflets, the occasional single infrastipular prickle, smooth wood with scattered strong prickles, and the pistil form of the flower; not quite the clublike column but a set of coherent pistils, projecting like a little brush. Often the Musk perfume is there, for our delight. If you think you have one of these old true Noisettes,--pink, white, rose, even deeper in color,--run your finger along the center nerve of the end leaflets. If you find a prickle, or more than one, extending beyond the petiole, onto the leaflet, the chances are with you that you have one of the clustering Noisettes.
Most of the above features occur in the Pemberton hybrids of the Musk rose, made about fifty years ago. In these the blooms (in my experience) are larger and the clusters less in number. They are pillar roses rather than Climbers.
In our old gardens we seem to be very short of Bourbons. We do have Souvenir de la Malmaison. Where are the other hundred or more? Probably they live along among Teas and Chinas, not differentiated. A little close observation might bring some old beauties into the limelight.
Here are some points. Bourbons have aciculi mixed with scattered, hooked prickles. Teas and Chinas do not. Bourbon leaflets, like the others, are smooth above, but unlike the others, have pubescence beneath. They are generally rounder and thicker, as well. Peduncles differ. Bourbons are inclined to be glandular; Chinas smooth or slightly rough; Teas somewhat hispid. Tea roses are said to have "weak necks" but there is nothing very weak about some of them.
It is not trite or hobby-ish to say, with the men of a hundred years ago, that Souvenir de la Malmaison as a sturdy, faithful beautiful garden rose, has not been surpassed. Bourbon blooms are not high pointed in the way of modern Hybrid Teas, but they surely are beautiful. In their great day, Bourbons were very exciting. Nothing could add more excitement to the old-rose fan of today than to find a dozen old Bourbon roses among the worthy denizens of old gardens.