Jean- That's beautiful! Thanks for the lovely words and wonderful book recommendation :)

What a beautiful quote, Gean, thanks for sharing it.

I just love my Stanwell Perpetual. It's so charming and graceful, one of my most treasured roses.

I'm glad you all liked the quote. The fragrance and look of a rose often breaks my heart as well. Gean

I got Mary's book on ebay several years ago. It had about 20 pages printed twice and 20 pages missing. Where can one purchase the book?

Most of my Pimpinellifoliae are in bloom now. They are georgeous. We live near Puget Sound.

That's beautiful, Harborrose! And you are lucky to have such a wonderful husband. Are you planning to grow some of those Scotch Roses? I would think they would feel at home in the PNW.

Laura
- PS: I'm not asking about 'Betty', because I know you've had a long and possibly disastrous winter.

{{gwi:281671}}

'Dunwichensis'

Commonly known as the "Dunwich Rose," it was found at Dunwich in Suffolk some years ago but its date and parentage are unknown. The flowers are single cream shading to lemon in the centre, fading to white as it ages, the mass of yellow stamens enhancing its brilliancy. It is prostrate in habit, the long branches lying on the ground studded along their full length with pale cream roses, gradually mounding up into a low rounded bush. The young shoots are red, thickly covered with innumerable sharp thorns, also red, but there are no bristles. The tiny blue green leaflets are rather oval, their finely notched edges reddish.

p. 34

hi, Lerosier,
I know you don't remember me, but I visited your gardens last spring with Seattlesuze and a group of other people from the heritage rose NW group. I enjoyed seeing your roses!

Right now there is a vendor on Amazon that has this book new, for a mere about $60. When I priced it a couple of months ago, used it was $100. My dh bought it from Abebooks. If you google the title you will find several vendors that carry it. Or go to Amazon and type in the title. I like this book very much - but for you I imagine it's indispensable! Good luck!

I hope sometime you will be able to post pics of your roses; you have some really beautiful specimens. Gean

Laura,
I planted Stanwell Perpetual this spring. Like Krista in NY, I think it will become one of my treasures in a couple of years. It is the only one of that group that re blooms that I am aware of. There are a couple of others I'd like to get, too.

Thanks for asking about Betty! She died to the ground this winter, like a number of my older hybrid teas, but has releafed and is about 6 inches tall. I hope to see a bloom this year! Gean

ps to Campanula,

It was fun to go through that book and find the rose you found on your camping trips with your children. The only thing I can remotely relate your story to is seeing wild rugosas on the beaches in Maine. It was fall, but there were both blooms to smell and many orange hips that reminded me of cherry tomatoes. It was so wonderful to see those roses in their natural habitat.

I hope you get a camera to share pics one of these days, but as I've said before your verbal descriptions make up for them. Gean

cheers, Gean, for the pictorial reminder of the lovely Dunwich rose. Sadly, much of Dunwich has disappeared below an encroaching sea. The cliffs became more and more unstable so we eventually moved several miles up the coast to Walberswick. However, a few years ago, Walberswick, along with the neighbouring town of Southwold, was 'discovered' by media and politico types leading to the demise of a once thriving fishing village into second home wilderness as most of the original inhabitants sold titchy cottages for astronomical sums, two village shops closed and the last teenagers moved a few years ago. Such is the fate of our desirable picturesque coastal villages (Cornwall, Devon and many parts of Dorset). Not wanting to be a downer, we still visit for the occasional day (our old camping field in the marshes has long gone) but mostly, my children have a marvellous memory of endless summers crabbing off the wooden jetties, vanishing in the marsh boardwalks all day, appearing at suppertime to throw sand about our old white canvas bell tent (I didn't do spartan camping, even then.....it was carpeted and cushioned like a pasha's harem). And, of course, there are the roses, the sea lavenders and dune eryngiums, sea buckthorn and crambes which have found their way to inland, impossibly cosmopolitan Cambridge.

I have this book and it is a real treasure. The pictures are truely beautiful. I do know that the identifications are not always the same as you see elsewhere since ID's in Scots roses is so difficult. We will have to wait for Peter Boyd to finally publish that book-but it will never be as beautiful as this one. I love this class of rose and they are doing supremely well this year in spite of almost endless rain for the last few months. I can barely see some of them for the grass which I am having trouble getting at with the horrible weather but they are covered with blooms.

I love the watercolors too, Patriciae. She doesn't capture every detail perhaps as you might see in a fine photograph or a botanical print but more of the essence of the flowers, the sweetness, maybe. Her love and knowledge of the roses that live in her world shine through.

... carpeted and cushioned like a pasha's harem, Campanula? When I go camping this summer I will think of you as I nestle into a sleeping bag on a thin mat. My bones are probably getting too old for spartan camping.

For some reason - probably my own stupidity - I never got the point of Hugh MacDiarmid's poem.

The rose of all the world is not for me
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet - and breaks the heart.

I just purchased Mary's book on Amazon for $62.00 including shipping. If anyone would like my defective copy you can have it for the cost of postage.

About 25% of my spinosissimas are in bloom!! What a sight. I'll take pics this week.

I don't think you're stupid, Lerosier, by any means. I'll tell you my understanding of the poem, for whatever that's worth. I am sure that you are much more knowledgeable than I am in the history of the Scots rose as you are an avid collector, but I recount the following as it's part of my understanding of the poem.

From Mary McMurtrie's book I learned that by 1848 the number of Scots roses listed by William Paul was only 75, although previous lists of these roses included many more. By 1965 the book Modern Roses listed only 15. Because the Scots are early blooming and prickly and sucker, they'd fallen out of favor as new, more colorful rebloomers became available. Consequently they were being dropped from catalogues and were being lost.

Mary McMurtrie'sl watercolors and prose are her attempt to record the remaining Scots roses. She found them in old homesteads, cemeteries, and by roadsides; at the homes of people and at old castles. She lists places in Scotland where they could be seen. As Patriciae alluded to above, the Scots are difficult to identify as they readily cross with other varieties and there are many hybrids whose parentage is unknown. There are several roses listed as double white, for example, with small differences.

McMurtrie owned a nursery for many years and in later years of her life wrote this book as well as several others on flowers found in Scotland.

I think she means what she quotes: she really does want the Scots roses, not the ones from the rest of the world that were replacing the native roses, although not all are actually native to Scotland. Altaica, for example, is from Siberia.
Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of a Scottish poet named Christopher Murray Grieve, 1892-1978. He was at the forefront of a movement called the Scottish Renaissance, which was an attempt to preserve and bring back into usage the Scottish language.

Grieve is an interesting fellow- he wanted the Nazis to invade England as he thought it would be better for Scotland if the Germans took control. I think he must have really hated the encroaching English. Maybe Campanula knows more and will add to this.

At any rate, Mac Diarmid's desire to preserve the Scottish language and obviously its roses, too, are in a way parallel to McMurtrie's efforts to preserve and record Scotland's native flowers and plants, including the Scots rose.

Maybe their hearts were broken as they saw their Scottish flowers and language being replaced.

My own heart is broken when I see the beauty of a rose and smell its fragrance and compare the rest of the world's brokenness to the innocence and beauty of old garden roses.

I can't wait to see your pictures! Gean

Gean,

Thank you for your explanation. I often find it tricky to figure out the meaning of poetry myself - I guess I am a prose person instead. Your explanation regarding the Scottish Renaissance stirred my vague memories regarding the suppression of Scottish culture and language following the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charles and the Battle of Culloden when the Scots were defeated. I quickly looked this up on Wikipedia to make sure that what I thought I remembered was correct. Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia:

"In 1745 the Jacobite rising known as The 'Forty-Five began. Charles Edward Stuart, known to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender, son of the Old Pretender, landed on the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides. Several clans unenthusiastically joined him. At the outset he was successful, taking Edinburgh and then defeating the only government army in Scotland at the Battle of Prestonpans. They marched into England and got as far as Derby. It became increasingly evident that England would not support a Roman Catholic Stuart monarch. The Jacobite leadership had a crisis of confidence and retreated to Scotland.

The Duke of Cumberland crushed the "Forty-Five" and the hopes of the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746. Charles hid in Scotland with the aid of Highlanders until September 1746, when he escaped back to France with the help of Flora MacDonald. He died a broken man, and his cause died with him.

After 1745, Britain systematically destroyed the old clan system.[44] All aspects of Highland culture including the Scottish Gaelic language were forbidden."

Your idea: "Maybe their hearts were broken as they saw their Scottish flowers and language being replaced."
stirred my memory about the how and why their language and customs were replaced. If seeing and smelling the rose of Scotland did break their hearts, perhaps it was linked to this history.

Kathy

Here is a link that might be useful: history of Scotland on Wikipedia

Thanks, Kathy, for adding to the conversation about this.

She actually tells a story about "Prince Charlie's Rose" which was told her as recounted through the records of Edrom Nurseries by Alex Duguid. I'll just quote:

After the battle of Prestonpans in 1745, where Charles Stuart defeated the Government troops ... on the evening of that day a reception was held in the ballroom of Holyrood Palace at which the prince (Charles Stuart or Bonnie Prince Charlie) wore on his coat a double white rose. On the morning after the prince had gone the chambermaid found the rose left on the dressing-table in the bedroom. She took it home to her mother, a keen gardener, who managed to root the rose spray. Eventually the resulting plant was planted in the gardens of Carberry Towers ... where it flourished... In 1926 when the Misses Logan-Home moved the Edrom Nurseries to Silverwells, near Coldingham, the rose was planted there and soon developed into a large bush, increasing itself by suckers. Again when I came to Ballater in 1979 I took a plant of this rose with me, where it is spreading and flowering freely. Approximately 3 feet high, it produces many small double white flowers every summer.

She says then that she still has a plant of Prince Charlie's rose which was given to her by this man named Alex Duguid, who worked for many years with the Misses Logan-Home at Edrom Nurseries.

The only problem with the story is that you can't root spinosissimas through cuttings. I once had a William III cutting that lived for 6-8 months, although it put out lots of new growth including laterals above ground it produced absolutely no roots at all below ground. I have gotten Robbie Burns to root but to date that is the only spinosissima that I have ever gotten to root. I suppose Bonnie Prince Charlie could have been wearing a sucker, which would have lived. The explanation given of the poem is a good one and makes sense.

It is true also that history is often the stuff of legends, which can be more fiction than anything else. I don't know what's true here.

I am not sure that the author of the book placed much stock in the story either, except to recount what was told her, because there is no rose that she labeled "Prince Charlie's Rose" that I have found-She has a picture of a double white from her garden which she says is similar to the one from the nursery at Edrom. I haven't been able to find anything else which might be the double white rose which she said she gotten from the Edrom Nursery, descended from the rose Prince Charlie wore.

May I ask if there's any mention of the Scot Rose 'Mrs. Colville'. I acquired this rose soem years back and find very little information on it.

Thanks, Karen.

aha, that Celtic love of romance and language....why spoil an evocative and stirring tale of patriotism, faithfulness and endurance by anything as humdrum as actual facts? Half of my family are from the other wing of celtic culture, the Irish. No-one can maintain a grudge like these bloody celts....I was raised with tales of the dreadful iniquity of Oliver Cromwell (baby massacres!) and the vile suppression by the English (eleven hundred years of persecution by a bunch of gobshites!). When I met ny first partner, a Scot, the legends of English villainy were gleefully recounted at great (tedious) length as though these sins happened just DAYS ago. Nevertheless, our native flora is sparse (the Ice Age.....and an island) so we are keen to celebrate such lovely flowering plants as our dainty wild roses, regardless of national fervour.
True, Lerosier, I have spent many fruitless hours, days, months even, attempting to root these intransigent and teasing roses.....like you, I have congratulated myself fulsomely, only to search in vain for the merest sign of an actual growing root, despite the green promise of the leaves and stems. Sharp spades and stout boots have proved the best propagation aid.

Karen, this is what I find:

Mrs. Colville

A hybrid, probably a cross with Rosa pendulina, as it has its smooth red-brown wood and long plum-red hips. A large, strong bush suckering freely, it is covered with rich, deep crimson-purple flowers with vivid white centres - a spectacular sight, one quite startling to come on suddenly. The flowers are single, with occasional odd petals, so that the brilliant white centres are prominent. The sepals are long and reverse as the flower opens. The leaflets are oval, dark green, finely notched, and paler beneath. The stems have sharp thorns but no bristles, although the flower stalks are bristly. From Bent, Laurencekirk, this plant came originally from Kinnordie, near Kirriemuir, near Forfar.

p.77

I hope this is of some use to you. Is this a good description of yours?

Lerosier

all those prickles make it harder to root Scotch Roses.
I suggest taking a large root cutting from a mature plant.

- cut with a clean knife: a 3 inch long or longer root cutting in September before the plant has gone into dormancy, There are two types of roots, anchoring roots and feed uptake roots, so try and get a thick root with some fine hair like roots on it. Choose a healthy root section that hasn't been gnawed on by some critter.
-the thicker the root the higher the chance is that it will grow into a plant.
-Just plant the root, in a pot,
I plant long roots (5 inches or longer) horizontally, in this way I sometimes get more than one plat.
- with good potting soil that has been mixed with 1/3rd native soil so it drains properly.
Make sure the pot has holes in it for drainage.
-Plant each root c. 3 inches deep from the surface.

-Put the pot outside where it will get water from rain. not beneath the eaves.
I forgot that I took rose root cuttings last autumn, until I noticed this May, a pot filled with 4 inch tall rose plants in the corner of my backyard.

That is how I root hard-to-root rosebushes.

Luxrosa

I love this post---- --Gean---what a wonderful thoughtfull DH you have----it is so much fun when our spouses really listen to our dreams.----The book sounds wonderful.

--I'm having such a lovely time this evening enjoying the knowledge of all you wonderful rose-lovers.

Thanks to all of you for for sharing your love of roses and history---

Florence

Gean, Thanks for finding the description for me. I went out to look more closely this weekend and I believe I have Doorenbos Selection instead. The hips forming on my plant are round not elongated like the description. I had both at my previous house but had moved and left 90% of my roses behind. I grabbed whatever were in pots and must have picked up DS instead of Mrs. Colville. oh well. I'm glad to have DS as well.

gardening_fever, you're welcome. I saw Doorenbos Selection last year and think it is a beautiful rose. I hope you're able to replace all the roses you left behind and have the garden you want. DS is one I'd like too. Good luck with your garden!

Florence, thank you; this was a fun thread for me too.

Gean