Connie, I can see why you like Tip Top, it's so pretty. I think we need a trip abroad.
That is a really long list!

Carla

Throw in Admiral Dewey (HT, Taylor, 1899)

There's a bit of irony in Roses of the World in color. Many, many of the color plates were first used in the advertising pages printed by McFarland. So the choice of which roses to show in color was money/sales driven rather than showing the best possible roses for a part of North America.
It's ironic that McFarland would have roses now lost because his efforts were to foster an American Rose Industry that would mean that the USA would no longer rely on importing roses from Europe. And that simple act probably led to the extinction of some of the great old roses. RofWiC also didn't give much space to the ramblers that had been so beloved two decades earlier, and that too could have led people to going for the newest, but not necessarily the best roses.
McFarland was the recipient of many, many roses from around the world. Many of Alastair Clark's H Giganteas were sent to McFarland for testing. Most are now gone from this continent, Harrisburg PA not being especially noted for its kindness to roses in the gigantea line.

There are some older roses that were important for their offspring.
Parks Yellow Tea Scented china....what did the rebloomer really look like and how large was it and how did it make so many refined yellow offspring?
Mme. Desprez....a parent of Souv. de la Malmaison. The last plant may have been in Scandanavia and is no longer listed with that nursery. Another report of Mme.D from a chateau on the Loire...I had someone check and the gardener there now knows nothing of it, nor do th chateau gardens nearby.

The Ruskin Rose of Van Fleet with lots of attached ironies is now readily available in Europe and only custom here from Vintage. But, then, Ruskin, only has some scruffy ramblers in the neighborhood of the colony where Van Fleet did some hybridizing. Whether he did roses there, the dissolution of the colony and sale of its assets, and other social experiments do muddy the Van Fleet waters.
And my own favorite Eugenie Lamesch. Sister of the now better known Leonie Lamesch. At the turn of the century, both were grown ....never did someone grow one and not the other. Yet LL survives and Eugenie is gone but for one picture that's in a pack of note cards.
And has anyone ever heard of the Choctaw Rose?

I will be in Paris 2 weeks from today...perhaps I should take a larger suitcase ;-)

Kathy

and one I REALLY would like to have:
Tip-Top, Poly, Lambert, 1909 (Check out the photo on HMF in the link below)

*** And you SHOULD have it!
I do -- thanks to the friend who passed it along to me.

Here in Coastal SoCal, Tip-Top makes a neat, rounded bush, densely-foliaged, disease-free, and COVERED with small fragrant buds.
The foliage is similar to that of Leonie Lamesch (or so I think).
Tip-Top is listed as available from Vintage Gardens Rose Nursery.

I should add -- some of the early HTs that you can't easily find may be among the un-identifiables which have been found by Rose Rustlers.

Jeri

I took the HMF list of each rose's supplier at face value, and I didn't even think to check each individual rose at the vendors' sites. Jeri, I can't thank you enough for bringing Tip-Top at Vintage to my attention. They also have Druschki Rubra, Jacotte, and Primevere. I ordered Tip-Top and Druschki Rubra in gallons, and I'll wait on the other two.

Kathy, only a true friend would offer to smuggle roses into the country for me. You made my day.

Ann, the things you know amaze me. (I hope to be able to come to Tufton Memorial Day weekend -- don't know yet if I have a replacement rose show volunteer.) I think McFarland gave as much space as he could to ramblers, given the climate of hybrid tea-mania at the time. He noted over and over that some rose he was describing was a good one, but under-appreciated . . . etc. Notice how many of the roses I've listed above are climbers and/or ramblers.

Connie

Connie, do you happen to remember a mention of Victor Trouillard? I've been trying to find out about this one. HMF says only, "existence unknown," which sounds so sad and so final. All the roses that have come this way and passed, all that beauty and history and the only thing that may ever be said about them again is "existence unknown."

It's such a shame. Yes, thank goodness for our old rose nurseries.

You have read the google books references below?
From them we know it was both in Europe and in North America.

Connie,

You might send your list to Ashdown. Perhaps they might import some of those roses from Europe to add to their inventory.

Robert

Connie, sounds like we have been on similar paths, Thanks to Ann, Berndoodle and others, who have been posting links to great rose books and annuals of the past now available on Google Books, I've been losing a lot of sleep reading these "virtually dusty" old volumes.

And like you, I've been impressed at how many "must have" roses of the past are now either thought extinct, or are in one "known" repository.

I wish you good fortune in your quest!

Bill

We need more information like this post=====
I too love to curl up in a chair and drool over all the roses.

Thanks,

Florence

Oh my, Ann, no I hadn't! I hadn't even remembered that Google feature. Thank you so much.

I have van Fleet's 'Ruskin' and according to a friend, also his 'Dr. E.M. Mills'. She claims that she gave it to me but I am sure she didn't. It is a hybrid hugonis. 'Ruskin' is in commerce, the Doctor is not, but it is handed round among rosarians here. I may have to ask to have it after all.

A rose not on the McFarland list that I love is 'Jean Lafitte', another American rose that seems not to be sold in the US and I wonder why? Surely it must be grown by somebody somewhere?

Wowser!
(Imagine fireworks going off in the sky to celebrate the birth of a new heir to a throne or our independence day.)
My goodness gracious.

My friend at Appalachian Rose has been looking all over North America for Dr. E.M. Mills and even the rose society in New York State that is named to honor the man (and there's a rose garden named for him as well in Syracuse NY)
and they don't have the rose.
Right now I'm simply excited that the rose still exists and in such healthy clones that it's a passaround.
I shall call Ron tonight.
Ruskin is my own quest, because of the TN connection.
Thank you so much for the report. Now to do something about it.

Ann, smiling broadly.

Ann, the best source for Dr. E.M. Mills is the rosarium at the Himmelstalund School in the city of Norrköping. You could contact the local branch of the Swedish Rose Society for information. They are much engaged with the collection of the rosarium: ostrosen@svenskarosensallskapet.org

Or you could mail Henrik Morin who is on the rose committee of the Swedish program for preserving cultivated plants. He lives near Norrköping and will know all about the roses in the rosarium: henrik.morin@telia.com

The rosarium doesn't have its own Internet site, only this one at the Swedish Society site:
http://www.svenskarosensallskapet.org/externa/himmelstalund.html

You will find the collection listed at the end of the page under "sortlista". It says that the listing is not complete and some roses may have died since the compilation. Hopefully that doesn't include Dr. E. M. Mills!

(You know, it's really hard to type when one is hopping up and down in one's desk chair.)

This is why I LOVE a world-wide Internet community. Here I sit in Virginia, frustrated at the lack of availability of something here in the US, and one of our friends from Sweden opens the door to another possibility.

Ann, I will leave the quest for Dr. E. M. Mills to you and Ron. Please let me know how things proceed.

I've thought about the loss of roses a lot this past few days. Take a look at the incidents of shovel-pruning that are being reported all over the Rose Forums now, and one can easily see where a rose can be all but lost. We have limited space to garden, and sometimes one rose must leave in favor of new one.

At one time, it appears that Radiance and her sports were the height of fashion -- now we have Gemini, and Moonstone, and Let Freedom Ring . . . and whatever the latest and greatest is this year on the show bench. Don't perceive this as a dig against newer HTs, because I grow them and I love many of them. (Gemini, however, left my garden two years ago -- some of my exhibitor friends were confused at that decision. I don't regret it a bit.) Also, rose growers have always been bombarded by marketing. Buy THIS rose . . . use THIS product . . . (snake oil, anyone?)

As time passes, and fashion fades, good roses continue to please us in our gardens. I would just love to see, and possibly grow, some of the roses that were considered garden-worthy at various other times. My list above is just a representative sample, since it came from only one reference. I could go on and on, as I sit and make lists from other books . . . for example, where are all the other Brownell numbered pillar roses?

Back to the sub-subject of roses available other places in the world . . . who would one talk to, or where would one find, the rules for legal importation of roses into the US. I know it can be done, under certain strict procedures which, I'm sure, vary according to the country the roses come from -- but I have no idea where to even start to research this. Anyone know?

Connie

You need to be inspected by your local plant inspectors. These aren't the county agents, but the folks who inspect the nurseries, growers....
They will check out where you plan to grow the roses or other plants, and then will schedule inspections once the plants are in the ground or in pots, isolated from the rest of your roses. For two years. They can also require you to refrigerate all fallen leaves, debris, etc. for inspection. Totally their call.
The cost of these inspections can be very high in some states, or not in others. (I'm fortunate that Oakes Daylily Nursery has a huge growing field about a mile past my place.)
Once you are approved, you have a label that goes to the person you're buying from and it has to be on the package for inspection at the port of import.
Some ports are better than others as to lag time in inspecting the plants.

DH and I have been trying to find Mme. Desprez for years. There are several stories of dead ends I've reached. But in all the books from the 1800s that I've read (and Mme. Desprez is one of the first roses I look up), there is a single hint as to her possible demise, a side comment as to the need to repropagate the rose every three years or so.

I had gotten Rose Kingsley's Roses and Rose Gardens through Interlibrary Loan and liked it so much that I got a copy. And I was rereading it last night and found that she loved Eugenie Lamesch, she didn't mention Leonie.

As google adds more and more books, it's getting easier to search for individual roses through history. But the subscription search engines (University Libraries have them) especially for newspapers have hidden gems. Within twenty years of the first Noisette, sprays of noisettes were winning rose shows in New England.
I am now wondering when the last appearances of Eugenie and Mme. Desprez were in print or magazines.

And on the Radiance line, there was a tendency in the early 20th century to refer to Radiance roses. Now were they all related to the original Radiance or were there marketers that recognized a bandwagon?

Sigh. Radiance, the pink original, is a rose I have been coveting since 1998 when I saw it at Sangerhausen where it stuck out as a superbly healthy and perfectly beautiful rose. Not available anywhere in Europe. Dead or removed as late as 2005 from the Gothenburg rosarium where I had at least a small chance of getting it through inside connections as they don't normally sell roses. Heavy sighs.

There's a beautiful Radiance out at Rancho Camulos.
And a MONSTROUS Red Radiance, as well. (Definitely budded on Ragged Robin).

The one I've always loved best, tho, is Careless Love.

Jeri