Rosa
cinnamomea 'Plena'. Species
n a visit to Monticello in 1996, I first learned of this
rose. It was for sale in the quaint, little outdoor garden shop among other
roses that Thomas Jefferson imported and grew at his home. The name
enticed me with an anticipated spicy fragrance, but alas I detect no cinnamon
scent whatsoever in the plant I grow in a semi-shaded border with hostas, fox
glove, and other woodland plants. It is one of the first roses to bloom,
starting in early May and blooming a little more than three weeks. The dark red
canes are full of prickles, and are now spreading by suckering. It's height and
width are 5 to 6 feet. The blooms are small, quite double, and of a rather different form with prominent stamens. The first two seasons it bloomed I detected no scent at all. In its third season they did exude a slight sweet scent that the bees discovered and enjoyed. It is a very healthy and robust rose, having no black-spot or mildew problems, and requiring no water during this seasons heat and drought. It's arching canes are crowding the nearby path and snag me every time... I won't prune them back until after next spring's blooms-- the detour will be worth it!
kbk 1999 September 16
"Hardy, spring flowring shrub. Slightly fragrant, pale to medium-pink, double flowers and grayish-green foliage. Mauvish-purple, upright-growing stems and attractive, round fruits offer year-round interest. Shrub grows to 6 feet high and 4 feet wide. Tolerates partial shade and moderately rich soil."
"USDA Zones 5 through 9. This unusual rose, native of northern and western Asia, was in cultivation before the seventeenth century. The double form is also know as 'Rose du Saint Sacrement' or 'Whitsuntide Rose' and is suitable for woodland plantings as well as in the shrub border."
---The Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, Charlottesville, VA
"DOUBLE CINNAMON ROSE
This is a double form of R.
Cinnamonea, a wild rose, extending across Northern Europe and Asia to
Japan. It is not, therefore, remarkable that it is one of the oldest of our
garden Roses, having been grown by Gerard in his Holborn garden in 1517. He
writes, 'the flowers be exceeding double, and yellow in the middle, of a pale
red colour, sometimes of a carnation'. 'The flowers have little or no savour at
all.' In France it has had many names, the Latin Rosa Majalis, the rose
of May--being used by the earliest writers. It was also known as Rose de Paques
(a late Easter) and Rose du Saint Sacrement. Like its single parent it is
distinguished by its wide stipules and the thorns in pairs under each leaf. The
flower stem and hip are smooth. Flowers are a pale rose pink, two inches over
and very double, as Gerard said, thirty-five to forty-five small petals
irregularly twisted. The origin of the name has caused some discussion, some
few have detected an odour of cinnamon in the flower, most have not. The
ripened shoots are of a cinnamon brown, which may, perhaps, explain the name.
There is a good figure of in Miss Willmott's Rosa and also in
Redouté."
---Edward A. Bunyard,
Old Garden Roses,
1936
click for larger image
"ROSA CINNAMOMEA
'MAY ROSE'
Shrub to 3 m or more; stems
tawny red, pruinose, with paired prickles close to the leaf stipules and also
to the insertion of young branches which have at their bases other densely
clustered, straight, unequal and recurved prickles. Leaflets simply dentate,
acute at the base, almost always obtuse at the apex, upperside bright green,
underside pubescent; petiole villous. Flowers semi-double, agreeably scented,
I(-3); receptacles subglobose; sepals entire, subspatulate; petals reddish,
notched, in 3-4 series; stigmas in a globose head.
This abundant rose, which
grows wild in almost all European countries, has received the name of 'Cinnamon
Rose' because of the stem colour, not from the scent of the flowers. It is
attractive and in demand because of its early flowering."
---Painting by
Pierre-Joseph Redouté, text by Claude-Antoine Thory, P.J.
Redouté's Roses, First published 1817.
"It is not difficult to have good roses
anywhere in America on a square yard of land exposed to the sunshine half of
the day, with soil that will grow one husky weed. Indeed, it is reverently
assumed that the Creator intended all the earth to have roses, because natural
or "wild" roses have developed all over the planet."
---Horace McFarland,
1936
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