Rose history choices: I still have the monster Alba SemiPlena that I planted next to the Apothecary's Rose, long removed since ASP was trying to eat it alive. I think those are the roses of York/Lancaster War Fame. In which case the victorious white rose is fitting, if I have my Tudor dynastic history right, but it has been a while. Personal history - I have a piece of a rugosa hybrid that survived all the rose cane borer tragedy a few years ago. We all think it is probably Hansa, introduced in the early 1900's. The original for me came from a sucker in my mother's back yard, and hers came from the door yard at my father's parents' farm. Town records first mention the farm in my grandfather's name in 1915, when my dad was 2. My dad's older siblings all describe the rose being there as far back as they could remember. My grandmother had very few ornamentals - her annual effort was to plant petunias in the holes of concrete blocks lining the edge of the sidewalk. There was a mock orange bush, a lilac by the hencoop, and that rose bush. Nothing else "for pretty". She had a good friend, a farmwife up the road, that I remember visiting with her, and that woman had her homemade lawn chairs - benches really - in the middle of a riotous backyard of flowers. I like to think that my grandmother's rose might have been a gift from that neighbor. My grandparents were two of a community of truck gardeners who supplied the Springfield Mass area until post WW II interstates and children who didn't want to farm ended it. So it was a pretty intense plant-focused area, with several of the families now in the fourth generation who are focusing on a few types of produce (vineripened tomatoes, fresh corn, pickyour own berry operations)and mostly ornamental horticulture. Most of them are married to people with "real jobs" that bring benefits and cash flow... Anyway, back to the rose - I was devastated when I thought I had lost it five years ago. My original sucker, planted in 1987, had become a thicket, from which I had moved just one sucker that sprung up in the grass and looked just too confident to mow over. That baby was tucked in by the giant Alba, next to a chunk of granite that marked the edge of the driveway, where it was forgotten. You know where this is going - yup, the giant thicket of rugosa dead and gone. But the year after the Cane Borer Scourge was a memory, and I had cut down and removed all the evidence from the thicket as well as several other rugosa hybrid victims, guess who came peeking up - from the other side of the granite! Yup. It is growing kind of weirdly sideways, but has blossomed for the last two years. So I am waiting for the first strong sucker over there, and I am going to give it a Prime Spot by my back door. Gotta love those rugosas.

Fascinating to read in the article you linked to, Anna-Lyssa, how researchers scientifically measure the scents within and around flowers. The variations in results referred to suggest to me that the variations that rose growers report in how they experience a particular rose's scent may not be always necessarily due to different clones of the plant or to differences in the person's capacity to smell, but to external factors too, such as regional differences, including the effect of different soils, climates and microclimates and other very specific localised conditions. Maybe this is related to the concept of 'terroir' in wine grape growing, where the flavour of a finished single-variety wine can be greatly influenced by the soil and location in which the vines grew; even whether they were on, for example, the southern slope or the eastern flat of one particular field!

I dipped a toe into growing teas last season with some success and tried a few more this season. I am in zone 6b south of Cincy in south central Kentucky. I started with containers which I overwintered near my house's south facing brick wall (I'm too lazy, I have no basement, and my garage is too cramped to move them inside.) I was successful with Mme. Lombard, Devoniensis (the bush form) and Georgetown Tea. I had actually planted GT in the ground in the fall of '06 after growing it in a pot all summer. It came back with flying colors. I lost the Cl. Devoniensis however - remember we had that Easter freeze after a warm spell and it developed canker and did it in. Poor little Mme. Lombard, a one cane wonder, survived all summer and through the winter in the little one gallon pot it came from the nursery in - and half the soil was gone! I had to find a place in the garden for this tough gal, so I finally planted it this fall, after another summer in that same pot (bad gardener!) It has three blooms on it now, what a trooper! This year I tried Mlle. Franziska Kruger, Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux, Marie Van Houtte, Souvenir d'un Ami, Miss Atwood, Mme Jules Gravereaux (not to be confused with Rhodologue JG), and Lady Hillingdon. Most were grown on in BIG pots this time, with only Rhodologue JG and Mme. JG immediately going into the garden. LH grew a lot over the summer, it's a real beauty. I would definitely try it, at least in a pot for the first year to see how it does for you. Use a large foam or fiberglass pot and you'll be able to overwinter it outside. The foam pots provide root insulation and there is no worry about the pot cracking. I have 16 different roses in pots on my deck (this year) that I am overwintering. The varieties and number of roses change from year to year. Some go in the garden after a season or two. Some just don't make the cut and are given away or composted. It's a good way to test them out and grow them on (all mine were own-root babies when I got them.) On top of that I can justify my "pot ghetto" if they are in "real" pots and not the nursery pots they came in, decorative or not! BTW I also have Hermosa in the ground, it does very well, and has a very nice fall flush.

Having received e-mail about this post, will address several of the comments. 1) “Underlining of “found” roses, having an official AEN was not indicated, and could cause some confusion”. (I now realize that in “Word”, the underling of information does not appear when posted on the GW) 2) “Additional data on any “found” roses having an AEN would be helpful”. 3) “The fact, that “found” roses can be exhibited in a show that has a special class for “found” roses”. While they cannot receive ARS awards, are shown strictly for their educational value. (This being one of the main purposes of posting this list. That if a show schedule did have a special class for them, the exhibitor would at least have an idea of what roses are considered “found” roses). With this posting it will move down the line, replaced in the near future with one with more complete detailed information. Any comments or suggestions please use this post. Thanks