Chestnut Rose looks beautiful limbed up to show its wonderful bark!

Connie, what do you mean? Limbed up like a tree? With a single trunk? Multiple trunks? I have one, too, but not in the ground yet, and I really need to know exactly what you mean. :))

Sherry

Sherry,

I have seen this rose (or the single version) at Nick's rose garden in Maryland. It is a TREE. It is absolutley glorious. It's graceful beyond words. I've planted several of them in my yard. I will grow mine similarly to a crepe myrtle; i.e., I will take out/off the lower branches to expose the trunk. The upper branches will create a canopy. I've had success rooting the cuttings from this rose. With roxburghii one really needs to think outside of the box. I do NOT understand why this rose isn't in more gardens where it would do well.

Robert

What Robert said. The bark on Roxburgii is beautiful, and you can show it off to best advantage by keeping the bottom of the plant free of branches ... just like crape myrtle (thanks for the visual, Robert). This elevates it to 'specimen' level in the garden.

Sherry, mine is still in a pot, too. I plan to put it into my 'cemetery garden', but I doubt that will happen this year.

Connie

Robert, how tall is this "tree" you saw? I'll have to consult my local sources. That isn't how I saw it growing here. Don't know if it was just young or what, but it wasn't even a large bush let alone a tree. I know it gets big, so I'm not doubting you. This rose may not be meant for my garden if it's not manageable. Do you know how it handles shade? Does it repeat well? Is it self-cleaning?

And thank you, too, Connie.

Sherry

Sherry,

I'm hoping that I'm not exaggerating (and I hope Connie and/or Nick will verify), but I think it's at least 15' tall and nearly as wide at the top. It's easy to overlook it as a "rose" so to speak.

Now, I do want to emphasize that the roxburghii at Nick's may or may not be the double flowered "Chestnutt" rose. If he has the species version, that may get signifificantly bigger than "The Chestnutt Rose." I really don't have an idea. I am truly hoping that The Chestnutt Rose will get big.

Robert

Robert, dear, you forgot to tell Sherry that everything grows bigger at Nick's house. I'm not sure you can measure any normal garden reaction by what happens there. OT, he has the largest Marie Pavie I have ever seen.

The Chesnut rose at the Lynchburg cemetery is a lovely multi-trunked shrub, and it's about 7' tall. There, it is planted beside a brick wall and they keep it to within about 5' of the wall in depth.

The one in the display garden at Sherando Roses grew in a bit of shade, but it was still 7' tall and really, really lovely. Mine is from there. It just rebloomed for me, tortured in its little pot like it is.

Sherry, sometimes the only way to learn if a rose will do well for you is to dig a hole and plant it.

Connie

Thank you for all the responses. I think I am going to slightly "limb it up" as suggested. (Thank you Connie) The bark on mine is beautiful. My bush is at least 6 feet--probably over 7--I know it's taller than me at 5'9". It is just covered with blooms every year and would be "perfect" if it only had a good scent. Also glad to hear it grows in VA (Thank you Robert)as I will be moving next year to the DC area. Is it possible to attach photos on Gardenweb? I used to do it on Dave's Garden. I would love to show you all the before and afters. Thanks! :)

Planting must wait for cooler weather. I may be insane for roses but not for digging a whole bed this time of year. I didn't quite hear... does it repeat a lot?

Sherry

I am in Florida and my Chestnut rose, the double kind, finally bloomed this year for the first time in 5 years. I was about ready to give up but it's healthy and I was really anxious to see a flower.

It had 4 flowers that were large and full. I'm not sure about a smell, I don't remember that.

It is about 5ft with a few stems that are over that. I would like it to not be over that height so if I can trim it that would make me happy. Also, I would love to see it full of blooms.

Shirley

Mine is LOADED with bloom in summer for a fairly long period. There will be a bloom here and there on the plant later in the summer, but I would call it a once bloomer. No scent, or at least not a "rose" scent. Mine actually has a rather strange, not particularly pleasant, smell, but most people don't seem to smell anything, so I'd just call it unscented. I will try to figure out how to attach photos. Mine has put out a few suckers which I have transplanted. They are doing fine. I've not tried rooting cuttings--yet.

Hmmm, I'm panting for pics.

Sherry

The rebloom on Chesnut/roxburghii is dependent on sunlight. Ours came with the old farmhouse and was getting only four hours of noon sunlight a day, then we lost trees to a tornado (roxburghii outlived its tree enemies) and fall and then midsummer bloom began. Same plant, just more sunlight. Then a very nice summer for rainfall, and even more bloom.

The tallest roxburghiis I've seen are Stephen Scaniello's in New Jersey that was approaching at least nine feet tall and one in Columbia SC (the single form) that was up on a berm that was probably eight feet tall, which is the height of the longer trunks on mine (which would probably be taller if it weren't in a really acidic red clay.

We grow the regular double chestnut, a single-flowered seedling from China, and Carl Cato's "spineless" chestnut (spineless on the sepals -- maybe we should call it the pecan rose...), all in a large bed in nearly all-day sun. They're all on 'Fortuniana' roots, which normally makes a rose more vigorous than normal. But I don't think that's the case here. Our seedling does get huge. We prune it severely, but still, it will go 6-7 feet tall by at least 10 feet across in a year. My dad used to grow it (in High Springs, Fla.) without pruning, and it was probably 8 feet tall by 12-15 across. However, the spineless one is much less vigorous for us -- perfectly healthy, but seldom reaching 5 feet tall by 6 across. And the regular double chestnut, I'd say, gets no more than 5x5 for us, in a year (we do prune all of these severely each spring). We get continuous bloom on the double chestnut, but only a few flowers at a time, other than spring, so right now, it's blooming but far from covered with flowers. Still, I did notice a couple flowers today. The spineless chestnut (which is also very double and deeper in color) repeats, but not as well. And the single seedling almost never makes a flower other than spring, when it really loads up.

Ann, was it you who suggested an ID for the spineless one? If so, please remind me -- I've lost that info. Thanks.

Malcolm

Sorry, Malcolm it wasn't me.

I'm still wondering if the single and the more common double are all that closely related because mine just don't do things at the same time (like leaf out, put out buds, and I think the single may prefer to be a tree like form.)

Here is a photo of my Chestnut Rose earlier this year.

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Chestnut Rose bloom.

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Here's another shot of my Chestnut Rose.

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WOW!

Luscious.

Tell me, Clanross, does your bush demand any care from you? I could plant mine across the field from me but there's no water over there. I'd have to lug water until it got established, and after that he'd be on his own. Do you think he'd tolerate that kind of neglect? BTW, that's a gorgeous plant. How big is it?

Sherry

I have not watered it much at all for the past 2-3 years. (Maybe in a drought, if I remember.) I did prepare the soil very well with all sorts of organic amendments and then with fish emulsion/bone meal, manure (black cow and farm manure when I can get it). I try to give it some organic "food" every year--compost, manure or just fish emulsion, but it got nothing this year. I do mulch heavily as I hate weeding it--very scratchy. Every year, in the winter, I wonder if the cold has killed it, but every year since it matured, it has looked like the photos above.

It's at least 7 feet. Gets bigger every year and it's about 6 years old now, I think. Someday I'd like to have a long hedge of Chestnut rose. :)

Thanks, Clanross,I thought maybe it was 10' across!! Glad to hear that it thrives on neglect.

Sherry

Yes, it probably is 10 feet + across and 7 feet+ high. :)

I wanna see it pruned as a tree! There's no pics of that on HMF either!

I know this is an old post but I have really enjoyed it, and thanks for the photos. My husband was given a cutting of this by an old classmate of his. I am so anxious to see it thrive. Can they take full sun.
Sharon

Katladie, Yes, full sun. This year we have had so much rain that virtually every other rose I have looks sickly. (They'll recover for the most part, but not pretty) :( All except the Chestnut Rose -- it is lush and beautiful. It is a once bloomer (late spring), but the foliage and bark is beautiful, so it really is decorative year 'round. If you give it good soil/manure/mulch and a little water until it gets big, but year 3-4, you should have something similar to mine. Good luck with it. :)

I've visited old houses in LA and MS, where all that remained of old rose gardens was Chestnut Rose. It is lovely out here, but it seems to be particularly well suited to the South.

Jeri
(In Dry, Dusty, SoCal)

I have a four year old Chestnut rose that bloomed for the first time this year. It would be quite huge except for some reason about 1/4 of the plant dies suddenly each year. Gophers? Anyone else have this problem?

I found a pic on the web! (I love this rose -- the foliage is so ferny.) Unfortunately, the picture is not very detailed.

Here is a link that might be useful: bigger than a house

Wow!

my chestnut is a little bigger than clanross's and has the same shape .. wish i could see it shaped as a tree so i could do mine like that.. how can i root chestnut? i can root other roses but have had no luck with chestnut

ClanRoss, I'm puzzled why you'd need to prune that lovely plant. Maybe I'd trim the lowest limbs to within two inches of the ground - instead of their trailing the ground as they currently do - to neaten that one edge. But it's beautiful and graceful as it is. Why mess with perfection?

Limbed-up, the mature specimens I've seen are almost the size of an Ornamental Persimmon. Same umbrella shape, although with much more character than an umbrella.

I don't know if you go to Jackson much, but in Belhaven (a university district dating mostly from the 1920s), people have started skillfully limbing-up some of the camellias. (security concerns necessitate editing the streetside vegetation, in many cases, these days. Limbing-up spares these venerable plants. The Wackenhut Man can drive by and see that no zombies are lurking on lawns, waiting to invade homes... But Camellias planted by the friends and neighbors of Eudora Welty are spared.) All through fall and winter, you have these wonderful little blooming trees, now. Quite lovely. Chestnut rose would have the same effect (although smaller than a nonagenarian Camellia).

This post was edited by plan9fromposhmadison on Fri, Aug 9, 13 at 6:03

I brought home a plant of the spineless chestnut. After seeing the picture Monarda found, I have no idea where to put it. Thank heavens Malcolm says it is not as big as the regular one. Still.

I guess it can wait in the pot for a while. I will need to think it over.

Rosefolly