That's a really beautiful rose Jeri - is it recurrent flowering? Is it a fragrant rose? The form of it is quite lovely.

Thank you for sharing â¦

Tricia

It is a lovely rose. I'm glad you saved it.

Thank you for saving yet another historical beauty! Carol

It's beautiful and a treasure, Jeri! Thank you for saving these roses and sharing them with us.

Sigh...
Jeri, you've made my day.
Lux

I'm happy that it is in the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden ...

It is a wonderful rose. YES! It is very much remontant -- but as strange as it may seem, I love its foliage almost as much as I love its blooms.

We have in mind a really special location for it.

Thanks for sharing! I love hearing about these found roses.
-Chris

That's just lovely! So glad you have preserved it.

Hi Jeri,

This rose looks very much like an unidentified white climber that I found at a plant nursery in the Miami area. The owner said that he didn't know the name of the rose, and that it had been "grown in the area for 100 years."

Does it bloom in clusters? Mine has a pink blush in the middle, just like the one in your picture, and shiny foliage as well.

How would you describe the scent?

I'll take a closer look at mine tomorrow when the sun is out!

It may be the deficiencies of my sense of smell, but I detect no fragrance at all from it. Kim? Connie? I would love to see your rose!

The rose is wonderful but I get so sad thinking of all the roses that are getting killed in cemeteries and what we're losing because of it.

Diane

She's beautiful. Do you have any idea how old she is?

Those reddish buds and pinkish flowers put me in mind of 'Louise D'Arzens' a bit...

I don't remember it having much scent, Jeri. Mine isn't flowering at the moment. It's struggling in a too hot place (the ONLY place I have for a climbing plant), but it's growing. As should be expected from a young, (particularly own root) climbing rose, it's taking its time putting out roots. Kim

Jeri, mine is still small and hasn't flowered this year. I just planted it yesterday morning. Will report as it grows and matures.

As to the Florida rose, your description sounds very much like the one that an eBay seller calls "Prom Queen". If so, I have it. It's in a pot, haven't made space to put it into the ground yet.

'Louise D'Arzens' really does look to be a promising match. Odd that the descriptions of LD'A all mention a yellow tone to the bloom, or a creamy look -- where none of the photos seem to show that.

Things that make you go: "Hmmmmmmmmmmm . . . "

This Richardson rose has almost never shown yellow tones, but does have some pink-ish tones, in cool weather. Elsewise, it is icy-white.

I didn't even notice the 'yellow tones' in the HMF description for LD'A, but I sure haven't seen them in photos. A slight greenish cast in some, but that could be reflections from foliage.

But speaking of foliage, do you think the leaves look similar? There was a pretty good leafage photo at HMF, but I'm not sure if it was a good match for your plant?

I think they are both gorgeous roses, but certainly can't say if they might be the same...

I'm linking to another page of LD'A photos, by way of further comparison...

Here is a link that might be useful: photos of Louise D'Arzens from a Japanese blog

Louise's bud and flower shape are completely different from what Richardson displays. Louise reminds me more of Cinderella. Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Cinderella

Yes, I can see the resemblance to 'Cinderella', though 'LD'A' looks more blush where 'Cinderella' is peachier.

Once the flowers open up, they do look like 'Richardson' to me, but that round shape on new flowers is what I didn't see on 'Richardson', and would have expected to see photos of had it been similar...

I'm not a rosarian, by any stretch of the imagination, but the buds and flowers don't look "completely different" (or completely identical, either) to my eye.

Also, the 'LD'A' leaves (per that one good photo at HMF) don't quite look like what I could see of the 'Richardson' leaves, and then again, somebody rated 'LD'A' as having 'Excellent' fragrance, while none of you seems to have noticed the fragrance.

Nothing much dispositive one way or another, but I still see enough similarity to wonder if these roses are related, perhaps by way of 'Mlle Blanche Lafitte', or 'La Biche'?

What is your thinking about who 'Richardson' does resemble?

Scent ratings have to be evaluated both by the individual nose as well as climate. If Richardson has scent, it isn't sufficiently heavy to endure the aridity and heat of my climate, though many others are. Jeri's climate should be a bit more conducive to scent expression than mine due to her relatively reduced heat and significantly greater humidity. But, by her own admission, she's a bit "sniffer challenged". I can't point you to a specific rose Richardson resembles closely. Everything about it impresses me as pre 1940's climbing HT. Kim

I'm still trying to figure out what to look for to determine what 'class' a rose might fall in. I sometimes see a reference to- for example- "modern foliage", and wonder how you know if leaves are modern.

Obviously, the resemblance I think I see is mostly coloration, but also shape, but I don't know what clues to look for to give me an idea of a rose's age.

So I'm wondering what you see that tells you this might be an early hybrid tea? I'm not trying to hijack the thread, but a few words (or a link) about what to look for might interest other readers besides me?

Thanks,
Virginia

In the Japanese images, Louise looks more like a match for Boule de Niege than anything approaching Richardson. :-)

I'm with Kim. I can't point you toward an individual rose that I think Richardson resembles -- but I get the same overall "character" from it that I see in something like 'Lady Mary Fitzwilliam.' IOW, early Hybrid Tea -- from the time period when there was still a good deal of Tea character in the HTs.

And that makes sense.

The twin graves this rose guarded were from 1896 and 1945. Father and son. (The father having died in 1896, at age 32, when Albert, the son was just 2 years old.)

There is a grave also for Myrtle Richardson, b. 1900, d. 1958. I'm thinking that Myrtle may have been Albert's wife, and that she may have planted the rose for her late husband and his father.

1945, then, is a good target date for the plant- possibly a bit after, but probably not by much.

I hate to ask, but did anyone plant a rose on Myrtle Richardson's grave? I rather hope so...

As for dating rose varieties, what I'm getting from your response is that a lot of it is intuition backed by experience with different types of roses? If so, that's fair enough, but it sure would be helpful if there were some tell-tale signs that were reasonably reliable age indicators...

Thanks for your response,
Virginia

Hi Virginia, I wish it was easier to quantify the "intuition". It comes from several decades of studying many hundreds of varieties, propagating them for The Huntington sales as a volunteer, growing many of them in my own garden, to see where we have been so I could have an honest idea of where it might be possible to go. There honestly is nothing (or, very little) new under the sun. You could probably correctly consider the new Hulthemia hybrids "new" compared to the past centuries of roses. But, there are wood types; foliage types, textures, colors and other plant part characteristics which appear and re appear throughout the genus. They distill into later hybrid lines, many of them recognizable from earlier hybrid versions. There is overlap between succeeding "classes" with early HTs resembling later HPs and Teas, and vice versa, just as there was between earlier types and their ancestors and descendants. After seeing many of each type, you develop a "feel" for what they should be expected to look like. It's a function of an educated view, vision, based upon experience. I am certain there will come a time when some of David Austin's products will be "discovered" and enthusiastically identified as something "antique". Many have "the look", which is what he has striven and selected for the past fifty-plus years. Just as you would probably look at a rose and feel, "I'll bet that is an Austin rose", once your eye is familiar with how a class should look, many help sort themselves out for you by how they impress your eye.

Richardson's plant parts are more "polished", "refined" than those of most Teas, Noisettes, etc which preceded them. It just has a more "modern" impression to it than anything older which has been suggested. Kim

Thanks Kim -- that's a good explanation.

When I was doing motorsports photography, a Sports Illustrated photographer asked me how I knew a boat was going to crash, allowing me to start shooting a split second before it lifted. I couldn't give him an answer. It was probably a combination of visual clues, and a change in the sound . . .

In the same vein, I can't explain why I can be pretty sure a rose is really an old one . . . As opposed to a 'Gertrude Jekyll' we found growing by a 19th-Century church -- which just screamed "Austin."

That's not a very good explanation, is it?

And let me tell you -- Kim is MUCH BETTER at it than I am.

Thanks for sharing these rare beauties! I love that delicate look. I bet the color is so much prettier in person. Hope you are liking this stretch of mild weather right now.

Oh yes! We have our coastal fog back!!! The roses may not prefer it, but I LOVE it!

Thanks to you both for your thoughtful replies. When learning something new, it's natural to hope there are a few shortcuts, even while you know there's no substitute for hands-on experience.

And, jerijen, I hope you enjoy your fog- that sounds delightful to those of us experiencing muggy, buggy weather...

Vmr ... you're right ... And it sounds frustrating. ... But the journey is joyous.

You're welcome, Virginia (and thank you, Jeri!) It's been thirty-plus years of joyous, often frustrating, always fascinating, but sincerely joyous observation and discovery. The best part are the wonderful people met along the way you get to "grow up" with, playing in the roses together for so many years. I wouldn't have missed it for the world! Kim