'Fantin-Latour'. Hybrid Bourbon?
planted my own-root
'Fantin-Latour' that I received mail-order from Roses Unlimited in late Spring
1997. It did not bloom that season and the plant managed very little growth. It
did manage a few blooms the next spring, and produced a good number of much
longer canes. Then in 1999, its third season, the blooms came forth in a
marvelous, but brief, display for two weeks. The fourth season produced even
more growth, and a blooming season that started in mid-May and lasted till
mid-June. This year I pruned it moderately after bloom. It has grown to over
six feet on my pergola, and has shown very little winter damage. A once
bloomer, but very much worth the real estate in exchange for the very full and
fragrant blooms. No hips. Susceptable in my garden to black-spot and rust, yet
does not appreciable weaken the plant.
kbk 2000 November 9
The photo on the left is from Ethne Clarke's book Making a Rose Garden and is captioned: "At Elsing Hall, Norfolk, the terrace is bathed in afternoon sun, its warmth and bright aspect enhanced by plantings of the shell-pink rose 'Fantin-Latour', and button-sized flowers of golden-leaved feverfew. When treated as a climber it is even more inclined to produce clusters of the sweetly scented blooms"
"THE ROSE BY THE TOMB
Twas in a
country graveyard
Forsaken long ago,
I came upon an ancient rose
Guarding an ancient tomb.
Gnarled was the branch
That caressed the mossy stone
But fresh and fair the
bloom
Of maidenblush pink and perfume dear.
To the rose
I said,
"Why unfold thy tender beauty
Where loved ones no
longer come,
Or waste thy sweetness
Upon this lovely air?"
Replied the rose by the tomb,
"In our garden, long ago,
This maiden loved and cared for me.
To abide with her now is
the least that I can do.
--Dr. Robert E. Basye
This poem
appeared on page 24 of the July 1987 issue of "The American Rose
Magazine."
"Fantin-Latour. This name I know from the work of Graham S. Thomas, who offers no proof of authenticity. I have the same rose, unnamed, and feel, as he does, this it can very well be called after the great flower artist. This rose came to me from a farm in Ohio, where it was known as the Thousand-Leaf Rose. Obviously this is not the Centifolia we have described before, but it is well worth inclusion here. I have long suspected that this is a hybrid with one of the Chinas, for the foliage has lost the roughness of the type. The plant is tall, to 6 feet, and lax. The blooms come singly and also in pairs, are of medium size, very double, pale pink The petals recurve into the center producing the little ring so aptly described as a button center. A lovely rose."
-- Richard Thomson, 1959 in Old Roses For Modern Gardens
(Richard Thomson gardened in Mansfield, Ohio)
"Sacheverell Sitwell and James Russell in Old Garden Roses name Fantin-Latour and LaNoblesse as two of the most glorious Centifolias. The former was called after the great French painter of flowers and is an exquisite rose that grows into a very large, very free-flowering shrub. Actually, in our garden, it has now travelled up through a tall Rhus cotinoides, the smoke bush; and the two shrubs look delightful together, as the rose festoons down through the branches and out over the tennis court. It is not a typical Centifolia, since the Damask influence is very strong, both in the soft, uniform pink of the quartered flat flowers, and the heady perfume. These bloom, often with a green eye in the centre of the incurving small petals, come in clusters, and keep opening out for quite a long time, making it a plant that pays big dividends in a shrub border. "
-- Nancy Steen, 1966 in The Charm of Old Roses
(Nancy Steen gardened in New Zealand)
"But for looking into, give me the great full roses. What pride we can take in the deep, deep heart of a wonderful rose, a firm mass of countless closel-curling petals. In death, as in life, those petals will cling together; whole sections of the heart will be swept up and burnt, or buried. What admirable 'waste' of structure! What divinely-created symmetry for out delight. It has bee argued that the cleverness of Man has called the double rose into existence, yet who but Providence supplied the raw material, renews it fresh every minute of time, or teaches the mystery we call a rose to grow into such perfection in the summer's sunshine?"
Mary Hampden, 1921 in Rose Gardening
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