As I was taking this picture, I startled (and was in turn startled by) a rabbit who took off into the grass. I was able to track him in the snow but each time I got close, he saw me before I saw him and he darted away. Anyway, I’m a sucker for any sort of berry, particularly red berries. And yes, I know rose hips aren’t berries. Strawberries and raspberries aren’t berries, either. So there.
Tagged With: Rose
Rose Thorn
I didn’t find much to photograph today and wasn’t out very long. I did take a few pictures of this rose thorn with my micro set-up. It is about 3/8 of an inch long.
Rose ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’
This is a nice rugosa hybrid that booms all summer long. The flowers have an intense clove scent that I really love. The only downside is that the shrub is so tall and most of the roses are on the top so you usually see them from below. Still, it will have a lot of blooms shortly and will be something to see.
‘Jaune Desprez’
I wish you could smell this rose. This is a Noisette rose called ‘Jaune Desprez’ (Desprez, France, 1835). The individual blooms are not the most beautifully shaped in all creation but it blooms reliably and grows pretty vigorously.
Rose Trellis
Last summer Kevin helped me build this rose trellis. The roses haven’t had a chance to fill in completely but it’s starting to look pretty good.
On the right is ‘Champneys’ Pink Cluster’ (Champneys, U.S., 1811). Although it isn’t really a climbing rose the support is helpful, anyway. On the left is ‘Crépuscule’ (Francis Dubreuil, France, 1904). Both of them are Noisette roses and bloom pretty well off and on all summer. ‘Crépuscule’ has the stronger scent but both are nice in that regard.
‘Rose de Rescht’
This is the rose that I was taking pictures of when I found the little frog Thursday evening. There are more flowers open now so it’s a better picture today than it was then, anyway. This is a little Portland rose called ‘Rose de Rescht’ which was brought to England by Miss Nancy Lindsay from Iran or France (it’s so easy to get those confused), before 1900. It’s a small shrub (two to three feet at most). I’ve been growing it in a large pot but I really should find a permanent place for it in the ground.
A Pink Multiflora Rose
Normally I’d be the last person to suggest that anyone grow a multiflora rose. About them the great plantsman Michael Dirr says, “use this species with the knowledge that none of your gardening friends in the immediate vicinity will ever speak to you again.”
Still, when I came across a bright pink multiflora — it is almost certainly a natural hybrid but it is a multiflora in every way except petal color — I decided I had to have it. I dug up a small piece and it’s thriving on my back fence. The parent plant was destroyed, so I got it just in time.
It’s really a lovely shrub and it is absolutely covered with hundreds of flowers and thousands of buds. Just don’t tell Spencer.
‘Blush Noisette’
This rose has taken a bit longer to get established than the others but it’s starting to look pretty good. ‘Blush Noisette’ (Noisette, France, before 1817) is a pretty little rose with a terrific fragrance. If you’re counting, this is the fourth and final Noisette rose in my garden. It’s not actually in full bloom yet, having a half dozen buds for every open flower.
Nick Weber’s Heritage Rosarium
I spent the better part of the day at Nick Weber’s Heritage Rosarium today, taking over 350 photographs of roses. What a wonderful place to be. Just before 1:00 PM a very heavy rain shower came through and we all watched it from the shelter of the gazebo.
I decided to take a panorama of the garden in the rain, and took nine shots that have been stitched together to form this image. As you can see, the tripod head wasn’t completely level so the image slopes a bit but this gives you a bit of an idea what Nick’s main garden looks like.
Thank you Nick and Rosanne.
‘Perle d’Or’
Next to our front door is this sweet little China rose, ‘Perle d’Or’ (Joseph Rambaux/Rambaud, France, 1884). It’s just about through with it’s first main flush but it will have at least a few flowers on it from now until the first frost. A wonderful scent, as well.
‘New Dawn’
On August 31, 1931, the U. S. Patent Office granted plant patent number 1 to Henry Bosenberg for the rose ‘New Dawn’. There’s a lot to like about this rose but not least is that it so reliably reblooms and it has such beautiful, shiny green foliage that doesn’t have problems with black spot, even here in Maryland. I got my plant from my coworker, Kamala and it’s growing up and over the back fence. This brings “rose week” to a close as this is the last of the nine roses in our garden.
Multiflora Rose
Last year in my Project 365 I posted a picture of this rose on Day 142, May 22, 2011. I know that you have to be a bit daft to actually plant a multiflora rose, particularly in a small garden. The great English rosarian, Graham Stuart Thomas, says in The Graham Stuart Thomas Rose Book (Sagapress, 1994):
It can best be described as an arching shrub, although its shoots will ramble into trees as high as 20 feet. Normally it makes a dense thicket of interlacing lax shoots, much like a blackberry. So dense is it, indeed, that when planted closely as a hedge it is rabbit-proof, and so thickly do its stems grow that it is becoming increasingly popular in the United States and also in Britain as a roadside plant, for its resilient thicket can hold a car which runs off the road. What a use for a rose! On the other hand, how lucky we are to be able to provide so pretty and sweet a shrub for such a use. It is claimed in America that it is “horse high, bull strong and goat tight.
Thomas, of course, was a rose person. How bad can any rose be? On the other hand, Michael A. Dirr is a more general horticulturalist. He has a little different opinion of R. multiflora in his well respected, 1,187 page Manual of Woody Landscape Plants (Fifth Edition, Stipes Publishing, 1998).
Under the heading “Habit” he says, “A fountain with long, slender, recurving branches; eventually forming an impenetrable tangle of brush suitable only for burning.” About its growth rate he says, “fast; too fast for most farmers who have this species in their fields.” His description for “Culture” is, “Same as described under R. rugosa although this species is more invasive; tolerates dry heavy soils very well.”
He goes on with an entry for “Landscape Value” of “None in the residential landscape; has received a lot of attention for conservation purposes; makes a good place for all the ‘critters’ to hide, yet can be a real nuisance for the birds deposit the seeds in fence rows and open areas, and soon one has a jungle; use this species with the knowledge that none of your gardening friends in the immediate vicinity will ever speak to you again.” Finally, he gives the following “Additional Notes.” “Utilized as an understock for budding the highly domesticated selections. Another species that appears resistant to black-spot and the typical rose diseases. I cannot overemphasize the invasive and greedy nature of this species. Have observed entire pastures/fields invaded and captured by the plant.”
Having said all that, I’m a fan of places for all the critters to hide. Also, this pink sport or more likely a natural hybrid, was growing at the edge of the woods near my office. I dug up a small piece and within a month all that was growing there had been sprayed and killed. Some would argue that I should have let it all be killed but this pink version, which is very similar in almost every way to the species, seemed worth keeping. The difference it in the flowers — they are larger than the species, as well as being a beautiful, dainty pink. There are somewhat fewer of them, but still enough. The leaves seem entirely free of rust, mildew, and black-spot.
Actually, my ultimate goal is to try to produce a tetraploid version of this diploid rose. That would be valuable for hybridizing, because some many important roses are tetraploid. Whether I can actually do that remains to be seen. In the meantime, I’ll continue to prune this hard, trying to keep it contained, and I’ll do it with the knowledge that none of my gardening friends in the immediate vicinity will ever speak to me again.
Pink Rosa multiflora
Another rose photo taken on Monday. Don’t worry, I’m almost out of roses. I posted a few pictures of this rose on May 12 last year along with a fairly lengthy description of R. multiflora. That should be enough of a description to keep anyone from planting this in their garden, but then, this pink version is a little special. Wouldn’t it be nice to get this pink color, along with the well known multiflora resistance to blackspot and incredible vigor, into a repeat flowering rose? That’s my ultimate goal. Not sure what to cross it with, at this point, but I’m thinking. I’d also like to try my hand at creating a tetraploid version of this rose and see what that looks like. Of course, I’ve been meaning to work on that for quite a few years. Some day…
Pink Multiflora Hybrid
The roses are really starting to bloom, finally. This is one that only blooms once during the year but it’s beautiful when it does. It also have very healthy, disease resistant foliage, so it looks pretty good the rest of the year, although it’s just green, of course. This is a found rose and seems to me to be mostly R. multiflora. The wonderful pink flowers, however, speak of some other genes in the mix. I think this rose might contribute to some interesting breeding work and for years I’ve considered it, but so far, haven’t actually done anything.
Rosa multiflora
It’s time for my annual photo of the Rosa multiflora hybrid I have in our back garden. This is a natural hybrid, found growing in the woods near my office. The parent plant is no longer there, because about a month after I dug up a piece it was sprayed and killed. Normally that’s the right thing to do with R. multiflora but this one is special to me, because of the pink blooms that cover the plant this time of year for about a week. It’s quite lovely. It would be even better, of course, if it repeated but one cannot have everything. It’s a vigorous plant, as one would expect with a multiflora hybrid, and handsome as a large patch of green on the back fence, even when not in bloom. It takes a bit of extra care, pruning and cutting out dead wood every couple years, but it’s well worth the effort. That effort is made more difficult by the quantity (large) and quality (also large and very sharp) thorns that absolutely cover the canes. Still, worth it.
Multiflora Buds In The Rain
The rain continued today but I went out briefly to take a few pictures. The large, pink Rosa multiflora (or mostly multiflora, anyway) shrub against our back fence is covered with buds and is just starting to come into bloom. In a few days, and certainly in less than a week, it will be covered with pink flowers. At this point there are only occasional flowers and lots and lots of buds. But in the rain, even that can be pretty, I think. It builds anticipation, if nothing else.
Rosa Multiflora
A few days ago this plant was a mass of buds in the rain. Now the rain has stopped and the buds are opening. Individually the flowers are not really all that amazing, five small, simple, pink petals around a bunch of yellow stamens. In mass they are quite impressive. The entire plant is turning from green to pink and will get pinker before it is done. I picked out one picture to post here and then second guessed myself. I found that I couldn’t decide which one I liked better so I’m posting them both.
Of course, like most rose species, this one only blooms once and then it’s done for the year. It also has very little fragrance. My dream is to cross this with roses that repeat and which have fragrance to get some of the multiflora vigor and disease resistance into a new group of hybrids. Whether that’s ever going to happen is anyone’s guess. Another project, even before crossing it with anything else, is an attempt to double the chromosomes. R. multiflora is, like many rose species, diploid (it has 14 chromosomes). Many hybrid garden roses, including most hybrid teas and floribundas and a lot of the roses I’d cross like to make crosses with, are tetraploid (28 chromosomes). For breeding purposes, a cross between a diploid and a tetraploid is problematic because it produces triploid offspring, which are, with notable exceptions, sterile.
Rosa multiflora
My pink multiflora rose is in full bloom. I suspect it isn’t 100% R. multiflora, because those have white flowers and this is clearly not white. What the rest of its genetic makeup is, I really couldn’t say. R. virginiana would be a reasonable guess. The color is right. The leaves are definitely R. multiflora and it’s got the requisite resistance to black spot. It’s possibly a bit less vigorous, but that’s probably something in its favor. R. multiflora will generally take over and this is large, but fairly well behaved. Pity it only blooms once, but then, the same can be said for the azaleas.
Rose ‘Cutie Pie’
I’ve mentioned this rose a couple times so I decided that I’d finally get around to posting a picture. This is a miniature rose called ‘Cutie Pie’ and it is, really. I’ve found two roses named ‘Cutie Pie’ listed in commerce. This is WEKruruwel, Bred by Tom Carruth and introduced by Weeks in 2016. So, it’s a new rose. I’ve planted it in the large bed in the middle of our back yard where there used to be two trees. That bed needs a bit more variety and this was my start at that. I plan to add a few more roses, two at least and maybe as many as four. I’m looking at a few of David Austin’s English roses. We’ll see.
Rosa rugosa ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’
I’m not sure what happened last year but for some reason, most of my roses died. One of them, a pink flowered R. multiflora hybrid, isn’t quite gone, with one branch left. This R. rugosa named ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’ also has some life left in it. Nevertheless, there’s a fair amount of dead wood to prune out. ‘Blush Noisette’ appears to be completely dead. It was never a very vigorous shrub but for it to simply die completely was unexpected. I lost my ‘New Dawn’ last year, but that I had to dig up because of rose rosette disease, is caused by Emaravirus species of virus.
Pink Multiflora Rose
Pretty much every year I post a picture of this rose. It’s a multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) that I collected from the edge of the woods near my office. Shortly after I dug up a piece, the area was sprayed and the mother plant was killed. This has done quite well in the yard until this year. For some reason, this and the rugosa hybrid ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’ nearly died. Another rose, ‘Blush Noisette’, died completely. I also had to remove my ‘New Dawn’ because of rose rosette virus, Happily, there is one old cane as well as another new cane coming up on this shrub, so all is not lost. Here are all my posts with pictures of this rose.
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’
This sweet little polyantha rose is just outside my front door. I’ve posted pictures before but I like this one because it shows the color of the blooms as they open (on the right) and as they age and fade (on the left). They produce considerable fragrance and especially on a warm, humid morning, it’s quite a lovely thing when you come out the door. There is some dead wood on this rose, but no more than normal. It doesn’t seem to have been affected by whatever happened to those in the back. On Saturday, at Nick’s garden, we talked about this rose. He has two of them and one is in almost full, if open, shade, surrounded by hostas. Nevertheless, it continues to bloom quite happily. So, if you have a bright but shady yard and thought you couldn’t grow any roses, you might give this one a try. The flowers are small and not particularly well suited for cutting, but it makes up for that by blooming off and on all summer.
Rose ‘Champneys’ Pink Cluster’
One more rose picture and then I’ll move on to something else for a little while. On the south end of the house I have this ‘Champneys’ Pink Cluster’ growing. Like the ‘Perle d’Or’ featured yesterday, this didn’t have any problem this winter. I’m convinced the death and near death of the roses in the back are location-related. Anyway, this one is fine. It’s a fairly tall, somewhat gangly thing but it does have these nice, pink blossoms off and on throughout the summer. That garden has become somewhat overgrown recently and is in desperate need of attention, possibly to the point of digging it out almost completely and starting over. There is bindweed (a.k.a. morning glory, Ipomoea purpurea) throughout. But this rose I would keep. ‘Champneys’ Pink Cluster’ is the first of the Noisette roses, bred by John Champneys in South Carolina circa 1811. It is a cross Rosa moschata and either ‘Parsons’ Pink China’ or ‘Champneys’ Bengal Rose’.
Also, dig the little, unidentified plant bug on the flower on the left.
Rose ‘Graham Thomas’
After mom’s brief stay ib the hospital, she had a few follow-up appointments, starting this morning. I thought it would be good to stay with her the rest of the day and because I can work remotely, that’s what I did. I took a short break in the early afternoon and took a few pictures in her yard. I also took some of her neighbor’s roses. This rose is called ‘Graham Thomas’, bred by David Austin, 1983. It is named for Graham Stuart Thomas OBE (April 3, 1909 – April 17, 2003), the famed British botinist, garden designer and rosarian.
Roseraie De l’Hay
My roses have had a rough few years. Three of them outright died in the last twelve months and I’m not entirely sure why. This one, a hybrid rugosa named ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’ lost a lot of stems but is still hanging on and has just started to bloom. The stems are relatively thin and the heavy flowers are too much for them, so they face pretty much downwards, especially after a rain. Like most rugosas, this rose has a really wonderful scent and the leaves are a beautiful green, generally untouched by any disease.
‘Champneys’ Pink Cluster’
We’re coming up to the peak of rose season. Many roses bloom all summer, of course, and we naturally love that about them. But even those that repeat bloom start the season with the best display of the year. This rose, a Noisette rose bred by Champneys in 1811, is a reliable repeat bloomer but it is getting set to be absolutely covered with flowers. It is growing on the south end of our house where it gets plenty of sun and seems to be fairly happy. We need to work to keep the bindweed off of it, but other than that, it requires little care. And such a pretty little thing.
‘Perle d’Or’
In the continuing series of roses, this is one of my favorites. I’m down from a high of 13 roses in the garden to 5. One of those, Crépuscule, was nearly killed a few years ago after being by far the largest rose I had, covering a 20 foot trellis on the south end of the house. This on, a small china rose called Perle d’Or is growing just outside our front door. It lost a few canes to the cold this winter but is in full bloom now, really showing off and giving off a wonderful fragrance.
Landscape Rose
I really like roses and I’ve posted photos of them here fairly often, trying to get each of my roses featured at least once a year. I also like to visit my friend Nick, who often opens his rose garden on Memorial Day weekend. He didn’t this year, for personal reasons, but I thought I’d post a rose photo, anyway. The rose that’s blooming that I haven’t featured yet this year is a landscape rose that our neighbor gave me a few years ago. It’s growing in a nice, sunny spot behind our garage and is quite happy there, blooming profusely (as you can see). I’m not as big a fan of these roses as I might be, mainly because they have little to no fragrance. But I can’t fault them in terms of blooming and ease of care. If you want a rose that will bloom all summer and which you can basically ignore, this is probably the rose for you. They really are quite spectacular when they really get going.
Roses ‘Perle d’Or’
We’re getting a second flush of roses on the ‘Perle d’Or’ outside our front door. This small polyantha rose has a nice, apricot-yellow color with perfect, if tiny buds, opening to somewhat less perfect blossoms that are, nonetheless, quite lovely. The fragrance alone is enough to make me want this rose and putting it right outside our front door was a good choice. It has been killed back in parts in some particularly cold winters but generally it does pretty well and so far has not suffered any irreversible damage.
Red Roses
Cathy’s mom had a visit today from an old friend and her husband. They brought these flowers, which was nice, and they looked lovely in the late afternoon sun coming in through the dining room windows. I took pictures of them from a bunch of different angles. Deep reds like this are a challenge for my digital camera and they tend to overwhelm the sensor but this one turned out pretty well. No disrespect meant towards Canon. It’s a really intense color and it came out well. Our eyes are such remarkable organs with the ability to see such a huge range of color and brightness that it isn’t actually surprising that technology is still trying to get there. We’ve come a long way, though.
Rose In The Rain
It’s been pretty dry lately. Not drought dry, but normal August in the DC area dry, which is dry enough for me. I’ve never been attracted to deserts and am happy when rain comes (within reason). We had a good rain today. Not the all-day soaking rain we’re more likely to get starting in September but a good rain, nonetheless. When it had mostly stopped, I took a few pictures of water droplets on leaves, starting with the leaves of this rose. It’s the China rose ‘Perle d’Or’ just outside our front door and it’s happily blooming and doing very well after being killed back a little last winter.
Rose Leaves
I wondered around the yard early this afternoon. It was overcast and cool but I found a few bits of color. The Euonymus japonicus is in fruit, which are small, red arils coming out of pink capsules. There were also the deep burgundy red leaves of Epimedium × rubrum. But I decided to go with these leaves of a rugosa rose called ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’. It died back quite a bit last year but there is a core that’s still alive and it’s holding onto many of its leaves, as they tend to do. I’m hoping the worst is past and that it will come back next spring. It’s generally a pretty strong grower, so I have every reason to be confident.
Rugosa Bud and Leaves
I lost many of my roses over the last two years do to mostly unknown circumstances. One that only mostly died is Rose ‘Roseraie De l’Hay’, a large R. rugosa hybrid bred by Jules Gravereaux (France, 1901). It’s a generally healthy, easily grown shrub getting 7 or 8 feet tall here and with deep green leaves and crimson-purple, very fragrant flowers. Thankfully, one major stem is doing fine and since that means the roots are still alive, I have every hope that it will send up new canes.
Champneys’ Pink Cluster
This is a difficult rose to photograph well. First, it’s quite tall and most of the blooms are right at the top, about eight feet from the ground. Second, it’s against the south wall of our house, which is brick but not the most attractive background. It was also cloudy today and the rose wasn’t in the bright sun, which would have been nice. But I wanted to be sure to include a photo of this rose, as it’s doing quite well this year. This is one of four roses that survived the great rose dying of last year. It’s by far the tallest of them but the other on the end of the house, which nearly died a few years back, has to potential to be much larger, if it can continue its come back.
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’
Although it will bloom off and on throughout the summer, there really is nothing to compare with the first flush of blooms on even the best repeat flowering (or remontant) roses. This rose will have at least a few blossoms on it from now until well into the fall but right now, it’s so covered with buds that by this weekend we’ll be hit with their heady fragrance as we come out the front door. We really couldn’t ask much more from a plant. The flowers are small and delicate but really pack a punch in terms of their small, which is wonderful.
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’
I really do try not to have pictures that are very much alike, especially near each other. However, I’m a few days behind in posting things and I often take pictures forgetting what I’ve photographed in previous days. Or, I take pictures of a variety of things and then pick one that I like, forgetting that a few days later I took a similar photo and have less to choose from. It’s that sort of thing the brings you the second photo of Rose ‘Perle d’Or’ in four days. Sorry about that. But you have to admit this is a really pretty flower.
Rose ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’
Last year my second cousin, Lyn, gave me a cutting of a climbing rose he has growing behind his house in North Carolina. It’s been in a pot since then but I finally got it planted this weekend.
Lyn said that the rose this came from was it turn taken from a rose that was given to his mother by Virginia, the wife of my grandfather’s (and Lyn’s grandmother’s) first cousin, Archie.
I’m pretty sure this is the rose ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’, a repeat flowering sport of which became ‘New Dawn’ and was the first plant to receive a patent (i.e. plant patent ID #1). Interestingly, another rose on his property, one which has been there since it was his grandparents’ house, is almost certainly ‘American Pillar’, a rambling rose bred in the first years of the twentieth century by Dr. William Van Fleet (in Glendale, Maryland).
Rose ‘Crépuscule’
Crépuscule is a word we don’t see very often and in fact, when I bought this rose (a Noisette rose bred by Francis Dubreuil in France in 1904), I had to look up its meaning. Recently, reading The Tale of Genji, I actually came across the adjectival form of the word in English, crepuscular. I admit that I had to remind myself of its meaning, which is ‘twilight’. I had thought this rose dead a few years ago after a particularly cold spell killed it back to the ground. As it started growing up again, I didn’t know if it was on a different root stock or not, but now that it’s blooming again, I know that it’s on its own roots. It still hasn’t fully recovered and it’s nowhere near as big as it was. It’s growing on a frame on the end of the house that’s about 12 feet high and was up to the top of it before dying back.
Rose ‘The Poet’s Wife’
In April I ordered three David Austin Roses. They arrived on May 3 and because they were bare root, I put them in a pot until I could get around to planting them in the ground. I planted them two weeks later on May 17. This is the first of them to bloom. It’s called ‘The Poet’s Wife’ and it’s not clear for whom it is named. As you can see, it’s a yellow rose and along with the other two, I’m hoping it will do well in our garden. It’s supposed to grow to about four feet tall, although measurements like that are generally very specific but in practice fall within a very broad range. We’ll see.
Rose ‘Munstead Wood’
The second of my three new David Austin roses has started to bloom. It’s called ‘Munstead Wood’ and as you can see, it’s a very double, old fashioned bloom. What you cannot get from the photo is the fragrance, which is very strong. I had to put some hardware cloth around this and one other because the rabbits were biting off the buds and eating them. Now that it’s protected, it’s going to town, with quite a few buds getting ready to open. Of course it’s still a relatively small plant, less than two feet tall, but I’m expecting it to be large enough that it provides a nice point of color in the middle of the garden.
Rose ‘Boscobel’
This is the third of my three new roses planted this year. This isn’t its first bloom although it did take longer than the other two did to bloom. That has more to do with the rabbits nipping off the buds than anything else. It now has a hardware cloth fence around it and it’s doing much better. This one is planted near the back fence and should be visible from the house once it gets a bit taller. I have high hopes for all three of these roses and was glad to get them planted back in mid-May.
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’
I’ve posted photos of this rose before but it deserves to be shown a few times each year. It’s a small China rose called ‘Perle d’Or’, bred by Joseph Rambaux in 1884. It has a wonderful, fairly strong fragrance that sits in the air outside our front door (where the rose is) and we are often treated to is as we go out or come in. I don’t think it’s been without at least a few blooms since it started in May. Some years it’s hurt by a particularly cold spell but we’ve had relatively mild winters the last couple years so it’s doing particularly well now.
Rose ‘Munstead Wood’
It rained today and I didn’t really get to go out until pretty late. The water on this rose, (the David Austin rose ‘Munstead Wood’) was pretty so I took a few pictures of that. This rose was only planted this spring and it’s doing quite well. The flowers are now up above the top of the hardware cloth fence that I put around it to keep the rabbits off. The flowers are now blooming just below the level of the black-eyed Susans and soon they will be above them. I’m really looking forward to the display we get from this next year.
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’
The forecast said we’d have a freeze overnight tonight so I took some photos of this rose, outside our front door, figuring that they would be the last of the year. As it turns out (I know because I’m posting this two weeks after the fact) it didn’t get down below about 38°F, so I was a bit premature. Nevertheless, we’re likely to have a real freeze before too long, so I’m not upset. As you can see, although it’s the middle of November, this plant is still going strong. I have to say, it was definitely a good buy.
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’
It’s rose time. This little China rose, ‘Perle d’Or’, bred by Joseph Rambaux in 1884, is putting on a fabulous show right now. Especially on warm, humid days like we’ve been having, the fragrance hangs in the air all around the bush. You don’t need to get close, it’s wonderful. This first flush is, of course, the best we get from it all year. Nevertheless, it will have flowers on it pretty reliably until well into the fall. It’s not a big bush but it’s as big as it’s ever been and it probably needs to be pruned back a bit, but certainly not right now.
Rosa davurica (Amur Rose)
Back in April of 2005 I planted 29 species roses in a bed I prepared on our property in Pennsylvania. Sadly, many of them did not survive, but there are a few that are still holding on and two that are actually thriving. This is one of those. It is, I think, Rosa davurica although the garden is in such bad shape, it’s not exactly clear where each rose should be. This rose has formed a small mound of plants about four feet tall and it is very happy. It’s absolutely covered with blooms and is quite lovely.
Rose Leaves
Abba and Josh are still in town but only stayed with us through yesterday, so life returned to normal (or as close to normal as we can get. Cathy and I went to the Ag. Farm Park after church and took a nice walk around two large fields. This time of year is challenging in terms of photography.Colors are generally less extreme with the exception of berries and other late-season fruits. I photograph those fairly often but I don’t want to post the same type pictures too often. There are still a few plants with leaf color. I really love the colors of these rose leaves.
Rose ‘Dr. W. VanFleet‘
A few years ago my cousin Lyn rooted a rose that’s been growing in his yard for many, many years. It grows and blooms prolifically and it’s become established on our back fence. We had a few flowers on it last year and more this year. Although it looks like ‘New Dawn‘ it only blooms once, so I’m guessing that it is ‘Dr. W. VanFleet‘, of which ‘New Dawn‘ is a repeat flowering sport. ‘New Dawn‘ has the distinction of having plant patent number 1 (October, 1931) and it shares with ‘Dr. W. VanFleet‘ very shiny, disease resistant foliage and lovely, pale pink flowers.
Rose ‘Dupontii’ (Snow-bush Rose)
Cathy and I went to the National Arboretum after church today. They have a reasonable collection of species roses, which typically bloom earlier than the hybrid roses. Last year we were too late so we made an effort to go a bit earlier this year. Some of them were past but a few others were still in bud, so there’s no way to see them all on a single visit. We did see a good selection though, and I was happy. This rose, called Dupontii or the snow-bush rose is not quite a species but is a hybrid of Rosa moschata, the musk rose, bred by André Du Pont in 1817. It’s a lovely, slightly pink flower and one that I’d love to grow. Understand that this rose only blooms once in the spring, though, so don’t expect a summer full of flowers.
Rose ‘Lady of Shalott’
I’m writing this over a month after the photo was taken, having fallen behind in posting my photos. This rose is called ‘Lady of Shalott’ and is one of two David Austin roses that I bought last year specifically to plant in half barrels on our patio. The other is called ‘Gabriel Oak’ and a photo of that will be coming shortly. They both have a wonderful fragrance, which is an important criteria for me. There are so many roses with fragrance, I don’t know why I’d want to settle for one without, unless they were being used in a way that they would never be approached (e.g. for roadside planting). For David Austin roses, see: https://www.davidaustinroses.com/.
Rose ‘Munstead Wood’
In the late spring of 2020, in the midst of the opening months of the Covidian Nightmare, I bought three David Austin roses: the yellow ‘The Poet’s Wife’; the salmon-pink ‘Boscobel’, and this deep crimson ‘Munstead Wood’. This is the healthiest of the three, at least partly due to planting location, I suspect and is growing quite strongly. Its first flush of flowers is very impressive and they are not only beautiful but they are strongly fragrant. It’s only been in the garden three years and it’s still not clear what its final shape will be but it’s growing strongly.
Rose ’Dr. W. Van Fleet’
A few years ago, my cousin Lyn gave me a rooted cutting of this rose from the plant growing behind his house in North Carolina. It came to him from one belonging to Virginia, whose husband Archie was Lyn’s grandmother’s (and my grandfather’s) first cousin. Virginia gave a cutting of the rose to Lyn’s mother and Lyn took a cutting from that. It may have belonged to Archie’s mother before he and Virginia lived in the house. I don’t know for sure but since it is almost exactly like the rose ’New Dawn’ except that it only blooms once, I’m pretty sure it is ’Dr. W. Van Fleet’, of which ’New Dawn’ was a sport, discovered by Somerset Rose Nursery in New Jersey in 1930. As you can see, it is making itself at home on our back fence, and doing quite well.