Rose ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’
I didn’t really expect to have another rose for you today. My mom and I drove to North Carolina for the funeral of a cousin and to be with family. We stopped at cousin Lyn’s house to change and enjoyed looking at the roses he has growing. He believes that they were grown from a cutting that his grandmother took from her cousin Archie when she lived in the house he now owns.
I thought it was probably ‘New Dawn’ but Lyn said it doesn’t repeat bloom, which means it’s ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’, the once blooming sport parent of ‘New Dawn’. It is a hybrid wichurana bred by Dr. Walter Van Fleet (United States, 1910). The repeat blooming ‘New Dawn’ was discovered by Somerset Rose Nursery in 1930 and has the distinction of having been the first plant to receive a U.S. Plant Patent (that is, it was awarded patent #1) on 18 Aug 1931. Lyn has three or four plants of ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’, which are all absolutely covered with flowers. Very impressive.