About 2400 words
A CENTENNIAL OF ROSES
Darrell g. h. Schramm
One hundred years ago, in 1912, England’s Royal Horticultural Society
held an International Horticultural Exhibition at Chelsea. Many of the leading
rosarians of Europe attended the event. At its banquet, several of the rosarians
commented on the occasion’s lack of partisanship, its absence of national fervor,
commending its enthusiastic unity and camaraderie under the sign of the rose.
Making quite a sensation at the event was Joseph Pernet-Ducher’s flamecolored rose ‘Mme Eduoard Herriot’, which the breeder introduced to commerce
the following year. Time would prove that it was a rose not to be dismissed.
This was also the year that the first flowering of the species Rosa Helenae
was recorded where it bloomed at Great Warley, one of Miss Ellen Willmott’s
gardens. Brought from China, it is one of the hardiest of musk roses. Furthermore,
in 1912 Journal des Roses recorded the introduction of R. forrestiana in Europe,
also brought from China. Because the popularity of rambling roses was at its
height, these roses fit in comfortably. Nonetheless, about half the new roses
introduced in 1912 were hybrid teas, the new kids on the block. Even about a
half-dozen roses nearly lost and forgotten were re-introduced that year. Yet,
comparatively few roses from 1912 remain.
Shall we count our losses? Of the 134 rose cultivars recorded and
introduced 100 years ago, only 26 are still commercially available, most of them
just barely. We have lost 108 of those roses. And of the half dozen re-introduced
that year, apparently only ‘Hebe’s Lip’ remains on the market.
Why do some roses fade into history? Why are some forgotten? The
phenomenon is as current as it is old; indeed, ancient classical philosophers
address the very passing of all things, so we need not be surprised; but at the same
time, they addressed the beauty of animal and plant kingdoms and the care
necessary to preserve them. Still, we may wonder why do we allow beauty to slip
from our fingers and minds. The reasons are many.
Roses disappear because of the whim of fashion and the submission to
novelty. Roses disappear because the quality of the plant was poor. Roses
disappear because of lack of interest in a wider selection of rose types. Some
roses gradually disappear because of limited garden space. Some vanish because
nurseries that may have offered rare or less familiar roses are forced to close
because of economic reasons or the owner’s health or emotional situation.
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Sometimes collections of old or unusual roses are lost because the owner dies, and
subsequently the roses are dug out or bulldozed. With loss of collections and
nurseries, sometimes genetic material is also lost. Some roses are lost because of
abandonment or neglect. And sometimes roses disappear because, as Alice Flores
has so rhythmically declared, “Our zeal to grow roses can lead to poor choices,”
that is, we choose roses that are not conducive to our climate or our soil.
True, no Bagatelle Gold Medal was awarded in 1912, but at least nine of
the surviving 26 roses remain somewhat popular: two hybrid teas, one polyantha,
five ramblers, and a climber. ‘Kew Rambler’ is one. Raised at Kew Gardens, it is
reputedly a hybrid of Rosa soulieana and ‘Hiawatha’, a Rosa wichurana hybrid.
Its pointed pink buds open into single flowers much like ‘Hiawatha’. The strongly
musk-scented flowers are rose pink with a white halo about the yellow stamens,
growing in clusters of 20 to 60 blossoms. The leaves are rather gray, recalling R.
soulieana. Growing from eighteen to 26 feet, ‘Kew Rambler’ is suited for
climbing into trees.
The same is true for ‘Rambling Rector’, though it will serve well growing
into a huge, dense mound. In Graham Stuart Thomas’s words, it is “impenetrable
and un-prunable.” Cream-colored on opening, the semi-double flowers turn
white, emitting a delicious clove scent. It seems almost a pure multiflora. We
know very little of this rose, save that it was discovered by Thomas Smith in 1912
at his Daisy Hill Nursery in Ireland (which, incidentally, closed its doors in 1996
after more than a hundred years).
‘Sander’s White Rambler’, like ‘Kew Rambler, will grow eighteen feet.
According to Jack Harkness, this R. wichurana hybrid is “one of the very best” of
such ramblers, a “marvelous plant for covering itself with flowers. Here again we
have this choice, either to have something which is one mass of beauty for a few
weeks, or something which is so-so for a few months. I go for the short life and
the merry one, and ‘Sander’s White’ certainly lives it.” The plant does, however,
produce some occasional flowers later. The leaves are rather small and burnished.
It, too, exudes a fragrance.
Another wichurana rambler still widely available outside the United States
is ‘Ethel’, bred from an openly pollinated seedling of ‘Dorothy Perkins’ by Arthur
Turner of the Royal Nursery in England. Its clusters are large, with semi-double,
medium pink blossoms that fade to pale pink, the undersides paler than the upper.
The flowering period lasts a long time. A vigorous plant, it grows to about fifteen
feet. The scent is faintly of musk.
Less well known in the United States but widely available in Europe is the
wichurana hybrid rambler ‘Paul Noel’. Its other parent is either ‘Mme Bartelemy
Levet’ or ‘Monsieur Tillier’. Certainly its quite full, salmon or apricot pink
blooms with quilled petals and a button eye are reminiscent of the tea ‘M. Tillier’.
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Almost unique in flower form among the ramblers, it is remontant. The small
clusters grow in a weeping fashion. Every description of this rose spells romance.
One climber, a multiflora hybrid bred by Geschwind around 1910 but
introduced by Peter Lambert in 1912, is a rose named ‘Prinz Hirzeprinzchen’. It
shows itself as a large red-purple rose reminiscent of a bourbon growing to eight
or ten feet. The blooms flower in singles and in clusters.
One polyantha rose (some call it a china) has fairly well survived the tests
of 100 years: ‘Papa Hemeray’, still sold by a half dozen nurseries in the United
States and by three overseas. Bred from ‘Old Blush’ and ‘Hiawatha’ by the
Hemeray-Aubert firm in Orleans, France, it is one of two remaining roses of this
nursery, the other a floribunda of 1956, ‘Coup de Foudre’. Several generations of
Hemerays operated the nursery, selling roses by Chenault, by Mallerin, and some
of their own. Most of their own creations, about twenty, were bred by Jacques
Hemeray and Roland Bergeson between 1955 and 1970. The company closed its
doors in the late 1970s or early 1980s. ‘Papa Hemeray’ is a somewhat angular
plant—typical of chinas—upright, bearing single flowers of a vivid pink to red,
with a white center. Growing about three feet tall, it blooms continuously after a
short winter break. It does well in containers.
Of those eight roses with a somewhat strong hold after all these years, two
are hybrid teas, one being ‘George Dickson’, still rather popular in Europe but
rare in North America and not listed south of the Equator. The huge, five-inch
flower is a dark crimson, veined and maroon on the reverse side, displaying a high
center and neatly arranged petals, wafting a lovely fragrance. The leaves are thick
and leathery. Alexander Dickson, the breeder, considered it the best rose he had
produced to that time and named it for the oldest member of the Dickson family,
the founder of this famous Irish nursery. At its introduction, it won a Gold Medal
from the National Rose Society of England. In 1916, the rose was rated the best of
new roses of Great Britain in the last five years. For two decades ‘George
Dickson’ was especially popular at exhibitions, and for at least sixty years it was
commonly found in old English gardens. On the other hand, to be fair, Jack
Harkness grew it for seven years without much luck, finding its canes too long for
the flower (“more like a Hybrid Perpetual”) and leaves that seemed “to open on
purpose to prepare a bed for mildew.” Quite likely he grew it in the wrong
location.
The other hybrid tea is certainly the most famous: ‘Ophelia’. Bred by the
renowned Englishman William Paul, the flower was named for the young woman
in Hamlet whose eponymous hero spurned her, railing, “Get thee to a nunnery.”
To say the name of this rose evokes not only that Shakespearean character but
also John Everett Millais’s painting of the drowned Ophelia (posed by Elizabeth
Siddal) floating down a stream. Hybridist E. Gurney Hill brought and introduced
the rose to the United States. He was quick to realize its potential as both a florist
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rose and a strong propagator. While HelpMeFind.com gives the rose ‘Antoine
Rivoire’ unequivocably as a parent, E. G. Hill in 1931, relating his interchange
with the famous breeder, maintains that “William Paul insisted that he had no
pedigree of his Ophelia” and that he, Hill, could not but “feel that Antoine Rivoire
must have been very close to the place in the nursery from which that [seed] pod
was gathered.” Thus, the parentage of ‘Ophelia’ is not a surety but a good guess.
The flower sits gracefully on a typical hybrid tea stem, tall and upright,
which elegantly exhibits the long, slender buds that have become the hallmark for
this class of rose. Depending on the soil and weather, if not climate, the color is a
luminous, pale bisque or a cameo pink with pale yellow at the heart. Added to its
delicate beauty is a strong, sweet fragrance. The plant blooms profusely.
‘Ophelia’ has been a prolific parent, ancestor to a multitude of roses, more
than 12,000. One hundred sixteen of them are first generation alone, including
‘Columbia’, ‘Dainty Bess’, ‘Mrs. Calvin Coolidge’, ‘Penelope’, ‘Rod Stillman’,
and ‘Talisman’—not mention one of its most famous sports discovered by E.
Gurney Hill, ‘Mme Butterfly’. Significantly, the rose played an ancesteral role in
the celebrated rose ‘Peace’; indeed, as one writer for the The Rose Annual claimed
in 1978, “Without ‘Ophelia’ there would have been no ‘Peace’, and doubtless
‘Ophelia’ was almost in its time as widely used by breeders all over the world as
‘Peace’ was later.” In fact, ‘Peace’ has had only about half as many unique
descendants as ‘Ophelia’—nearly 6000—although it has had considerably more
first generation roses: 364 varieties. Clearly ‘Ophelia’ is worth keeping.
In 1921 H.R. Darlington asserted that 1912 was not a remarkable year for
roses. (Recall that no Gold Medal was awarded at Bagatelle that year.) But, he
went on, there was one exception: the beautiful ‘Ophelia’. In contradiction to
Darlington, Jack Harkness 57 years later mentioned “the glory of roses in 1912,”
but his distant perspective may have been colored by ‘Ophelia’, which Harkness
believed was “the epitome of the decorative Hybrid Tea.” That perspective of
‘Ophelia’ is still shared by some rosarians today.
At least another dozen or so roses find themselves on the endangered list,
defined as being offered by only three or fewer nurseries worldwide. Eight of
them are hybrid teas: ‘British Queen’, ‘Climbing Richmond’, ‘Duchess of
Sutherland’ (not to be confused with the Laffay hybrid perpetual of 1840),
‘General-Superieur Arnold Jenssen’, ‘Louise Catherine Breslau’, ‘Mme Edmond
Rostand’, ‘Mrs. Frederick Vanderbilt’, and ‘Lady Medallist’. Three are hybrid
multifloras: ‘Caroubier’, ‘Oriole’ by Lambert—there were two others of that
name during this era—and ‘Roby’; two are polyanthas, both by Soupert et
Notting: ‘Ivan Misson’ and ‘Jeanny Soupert’. Another rose still holding on is the
deep pink hybrid rugosa ‘Mme Julien Potin’, A closer look at just four of these
may provide a sense of why they deserve to be among the living.
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‘British Queen’, for instance, a fragrant plant growing to about two and a
half feet, is a lovely white rose with a deep inset of pale yellow. When he first
introduced it, Sam McGredy declared it was “the finest white rose in existence;”
however, two years later he outdid himself with another white rose he thought
grander. Nonetheless, it shows itself as a very decorative garden flower. And
McGredy roses are especially enduring.
‘Louise Catherine Breslau’, bred by Pernet-Ducher, made quite a
sensation at its introduction. Fragrant, determined to open in any weather, it is a
low-growing Pernetiana, vigorous and branching. Its color was particularly
remarkable in 1912, being something like a coral-red-orange-copper blend, an
intensified version of many pastel tea roses. The coral-red buds, washed with
some yellow, open into full globular flowers.
Like the two roses above, ‘Duchess of Sutherland’ is a gradually
disappearing hybrid tea of some merit. Bred by Alexander Dickson & Sons, it is a
strong plant, erect, colorful, and fragrant. The full bloom displays tea rose
shadings of delicate pink with lemon highlights on a white base against a
backdrop of olive-green leaves.
‘Lady Medallist’ is a hybrid tea from the hand of Alister Clark. It was not
only his first rose released into commerce but also his first success. Named for
one of his racehorses, which was also a success, the rose is a pink much like ‘La
France’. It can be grown as a strong climber. Sold only in Australia, it was
assumed to have disappeared but was found again in 1996.
One wishes one had room for a section of the garden devoted to 1912
roses. Not counting the re-introduced roses of 1912, which, but for ‘Hebe’s Lip’,
now seem irrevocably lost, 108 roses of 100 years ago have vanished. Granted,
here and there one may yet survive in a ghost town, an abandoned home, an old
cemetery, a vacant lot, or even a private garden, but, despite the raptures written
on some of them, those roses are gone.
Why should we care? By and large, roses are not interchangeable. While
most modern hybrid teas do seem replicas of each other despite a variation in
color, the old roses are far less predictable in form of flower and plant, in subtlety
of shading, in the gift of surprise. Less manipulated, less measured, less manmade, they appear more natural—more of nature itself—to me. In addition, lovers
of old roses love not just the flower but the whole plant. Because few roses are
interchangeable, because they are a part of our horticultural history, because all
roses unify us under the sign of the rose, the plants of 1912—such as we still
have—deserve to be preserved.
Not to be used or reprinted without permission of the author.
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