First Rose of the Season — Perle d’Or
I usually only post once each day but those of you good enough to follow my little blog know that now and then I splurge and put a few pictures in a post or even put up multiple posts. I decided not to let the day go by without celebrating the first rose of the season.
This is a little China rose called Perle d’Or, bred by Joseph Rambaux in France in 1884. It’s right outside our front door and in a few weeks it will be absolutely covered with flowers. The flowers are not particularly large and they don’t have the huge petals of the hybrid tea roses but they have a wonderful fragrance and it blooms off and on all summer, with buds being killed by the first hard frost of winter.
The books all say it grows to four feet. It must really like its location here, because I pruned it back to about five feet this winter. I was at least eight feet tall by the end of last year. Still, I don’t mind a rose doing better than expected.