We must have posted at about the same time :) I looked at your close-up, and you can tell from the foliage and from the sepals that there isn't a lick of virginiana in Hallie's Rose - it doesn't look anything like 'Banshee', except in the most abstract sense, and doesn't have any of the tell-tale 'Banshee' traits. It looks more pure European old garden rose to me.

Hallie's Rose doesn't look like the Banshees that we have in the cemetery. Our roses look like the Helpmefind photos posted by A Woodland Rose Garden - very double, paler pink, with extravagant sepals.

I have never seen R. virginiana plena, and haven't studied it, so can't compare it to "Banshee." Stefan, you seem to be suggesting that "Banshee" is simply this species, not a hybrid of virginiana with Damask or Alba or any other old European rose - did I understand you right?

I have heard some speculation that 'Minette' is the same as "Banshee" - and that this rose is often found in Finland and other northern European countries. I haven't seen 'Minette,' either, although its description, including the tendency for the flowers to ball, sounds familiar. So do these photos, taken at Sangerhausen -
www.rosegathering.com/minette/html

DNA testing would be great - failing that, direct comparison of all of the would-be Banshees with virginiana, Minette and the Finnish Mustiala rose would be quite interesting.
Anita

Here is a link that might be useful: Roses in Finland

Interesting discussion! To which I can add nothing of value except a couple of close-ups of the rose in my garden (from Graham Thomas's collection and previously, I think, from Sir Cedric Morris's collection) showing the charm of the tiny, tight-scrolled buds which unroll very slowly (so that shape almost defines the look of the bloom). Also as mentioned the Autumn colouring beginning in the photo taken this morning - and the quite significant rebloom.

The canes are long, lax and wiry. Left to its own devices the shrub would mound on the ground. It is better displayed in a garden tied loosely to a large tripod where it can arch from a greater height. It is only pruned to take out dead twiggy material, and is now (after about 10 years) about 9 feet tall.

I cannot see any trace of 'Alba' in any part of the plant - nor 'Damask', really. It has the 'feel' of a true or near -species, rather as the other slightly unlikely double 'Californica'. It is likely a hybrid, and wouldn't it be nice to think that it was the rose GST mentions: ' According to my old friend Gordon Coe of Elgin, Morayshire, there is at Lochloy, Nairn, a plant of 'Rose d'Amour' which was given to the then owner of the property, Miss Burnaby, in the late eighteenth century by George Washington.'
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Best wishes
Jon

Whatever that rose is, Jon I sure want one. The canes look a little like Therese Bugnet, which gets a nice red fall color.
Rosa Virginiana only gets 7 feet tall, according to the books. That is the puzzler there, one of many.
I've said all along that Hallie's Rose isn't Banshee, though lots of people think so. If you go to Helpmefind, you'll see versions like mine, and versions like the one on Paul Barden's website.
That's true of lots of plants out here. Our silver-leafed maple is actually a silver leafed poplar. They were passed along by settlers.
I don't care. Looks like a maple to me.
Whatever Hallie's Rose is, she doesn't have any fall color today. I've looked and looked at pictures, and the best match are the would-be Banshees.
My father-in-law went back to his ancestral home in Norway in June. He told me about really tall roses, blooming like mad.
If George Washington gave Rose d'Amour to Miss Burnaby, this would have had to occurred before Queen Josephine had the repeat-blooming roses brought from China.
Another history mystery.
Most of our accounts of species roses are wrong. I think we rely on descriptions of roses made by somebody who went to look at the plant 200 years ago. The heights given for rosa acicularis and rosa woodsii are wrong in most of the books.
Probably the most reliable source fo that info would be Lawyer's nursery, which grows them for the Forest Service. And I can't find the catalogue right now.
It would be cool if somebody like Stephen could get a government grant and go all around studying species roses. There's really so much work to be done.
That story about the pale double roses that the Eskimos wore in their hair came from somewhere.
Well, I have to make hay while the sun shines. I'm busting up a rock bed today for a new patch of roses. The story of Hallie's rose and her western travels will have to wait. Like I said, sometimes a glimmer shines in the pan.
I was thinking, (a bad habit I know) and suddenly I thought, Duh, I'll look up Hallie's genealogy.
In the meantime,here's the story of the Banshee.

Here is a link that might be useful: Banshee

Deb, I so enjoy your conflations of history . . . ! I have learned so much over the years from your unique brand of lateral thinking :) It is a branch of Science all on its own, and comes up with as many Truths as any other :)

Best wishes
Jon

I have the species Rosa virginiana and once had the the High Country Roses version of 'Banshee' which looks identical to your 'Hallies.' I can see no viginiana similarity to 'Banshee' other than the outrageous, suckering. The species has glossy little leaves and smaller hips. I agree, 'Hallie' looks like a plain old Euro-OGR mongrel.

Jon's photos look just like a double form of Rosa virginiana. But blooms in September?! That inplies something else is in there, but we'll never know. I'd enjoy establishing d'Amour here in my garden, especially if it blooms in late summer! Unfortunately, I have never seen this one available in any US nursery, so I must enjoy Jon's photos here in GW. I encourage frequent postings, Jon!

Brent Dickerson in the old rec.gardens.roses days used to collect information about the 'Banshee' variants. Deb, look to his 'Old Rose' bibles for useful Banshee clues.

Hi cemeteryrose - I am certain that 'Banshee' is a hybrid - probably of Rosa virginiana (or some variant or hybrid of that species) with a European old garden rose; it's just impossible to say precisely what class that other European parent may have been without rigorous testing. "Minette" is absolutely the same rose, but it is NOT the 'Minette' of Vibert, which was an alba and whose old descriptions absolutely rule out the possibility of it being the rose masquerading with that name today. That mistake was made by a European rosarian visiting Sangerhausen, where the rose we know as "Banshee" (and which has other, equally valid old names in Scandinavia) was mislabeled as 'Minette', and careful review of the evidence was not conducted before drawing a wrong conclusion and perpetuating that incorrect name throughout Scandinavia. That mistake has arrived on our continent now through Canada, and although the gentleman I spoke with at Pickering agreed to change the name in their catalog this fall (adding that their plant came from Corn Hill, where the owner had said it may be the same as 'Banshee'), I find that they have not done so. I would bring it up with him again, but this tends to make people cross.

Thanks - this clears up some confusion on my part. Maybe we can get this info put into HMF, so at least there's one spot that has the right info. Makes good sense - the rose at Sangerhausen is Banshee - and is the same as the rose found across Scandinavia. It would be lovely to know how that rose went across the Atlantic!
Anita

Stephen,
Pickering has the correction on the second intro text page of their new catalog (at least on the version I downloaded from the internet.)

Ah, thank you, Ann! I didn't view their offerings that way, I just browsed online, so it's no wonder I missed it. That's great news; I hope anyone who orders "Minette" gets something along with the plant indicating that it's 'Banshee', too.

Anita, you're exactly right - and I wonder which direction it crossed the Atlantic first! It could have been bred on either continent, accidentally or otherwise.

Now I'm getting confused. Minette the same as Banshee? It says on that website Cemeteryrose linked that Minette is five feet tall.
Everywhere I look, checking into this rose, I run into all things Scottish. Queen Josephine's gardener was Scottish. His name was Hewartson, according to Stirling Macoboy.
Trying to chase Hallie's Rose back to Canada, I was immediately stymied. Her married name was Nesbeth, a name found in Scotland and Ireland. www.familysearch readily turned up some Scottish Nesbeths living in Brantford, Ontario in the 1800's. Brantford is just down the road from Hamilton, where Paul Barden got his copy of Banshee. Brantford is known as the blooming capital of Canada, and the Royal Botanical Gardens are located at Hamilton. Alexander Graham Bell lived there. (Scottish.)
Some other Nesbeths turned at Morris and these had more children.
It all fell neatly into place. I located a Nesbeth on the 1870 census in Montana and one in 1930 in Gunnison, Colorado.
The Trail of the Banshee? Problem with the dude in Montana is he was listed as Irish. And the 1970 Census for Big Horn County, close to Hallie's hometown merely says "nobody out here. Just some Indians, Indian agents, and a few miners."
Hours of looking managed to turn up a newspaper article about some guys who busted out of the Billings jail in 1909. They sawed off a bar on the jail window. You had to wonder why nobody noticed them sawing and sawing.
The fat one got stuck. By the time they pulled him through, most of his clothes were ripped off.
They all made the mistake of trying to board the train and were rounded up.
Not too bright. It reminds me of a couple of our local college football players. They decided to bump off a local cocaine dealer. Thousands of miles of desolate places around here, and where do they throw the body? In the field behind the mall.
They are in the can. The cocaine dealer was not too bright either. In his apartment, they found a written list of all his customers.
Where was I? All things Scottish.
Now I'm pretty sure that Hallie's rose traveled here from Brantford, Ontario with somebody named Nesbeth.
It's good enough for me. And I'm thinking that the Banshee rose was grown from this rose's open pollen seed. Just a guess. The height could come from Rosa setigera, which grows wild around the Great Lakes.
What I want to know is can anybody identify my rose? If not, I'm going to name it Hallie's Rose, forever. A woman who grew an acre long hedge of Harison's Yellow sure deserves a rose of her own.
Especially one which has the best scent of all.
Here's another website to ponder.

Here is a link that might be useful: Loyalist Rose

Wandering out of geneology books, have you met Google Advanced Book Search?
Below, for four printed works mentioning the Nesbeths, same four as when I limited the search 1800-1880

Here is a link that might be useful: And some alternate spellings.

The way to post this information to HMF is to go to page for Banshee at:
http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=516

and click on the COMMENTS & QUESTIONS tabs. Stefan's information about Banshee being mislabled at Sangerhausen as Minette and then being spread about Scandanavia under that name would be nice to have documented with a reference.

The "Minette" shown from Sangerhausen and pictured by Swedith rosarians on HMF on this page:
http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=4264&tab=10
is more uniformly blush than the Banshee I had for a year and a half. It hated the sun in California and made its way to the chipper with its sunburned canes.

Somewhat unfortunately, all of my information comes from knowledgeable rosarians from (mostly) other countries conversing online - i.e., the pages I gathered it from are in other languages. However, I've provided relevant links before and can surely find that again for anyone interested - assuming they haven't vaporized in the last few months :) I don't know of a particularly scholarly way to preserve this potentially ephemeral information I've collected and synthesized. As far as the currently-labeled "Minette" being different from the alba 'Minette' of Vibert, a brief glance at Dickerson for a literary review of the real cultivar's botanical features makes it a slam-dunk.

For 'Banshee', a height of about five feet is pretty typical. It suckers greatly, but it isn't a lengthy grower; it's actually pretty sturdy and bushy. 'Rose d'Amour' is supposed to be taller, but they are not the same rose. It would be pretty wild speculation to guess that Hallie's Rose is a parent of 'Banshee', though. Let's leave that question to the geneticists.

I take it back; some of the information linking the name change is present in English. Here are two links, I'll dig for more as I have time:

http://www.ruususeura.fi/c-englanti/Articles/Joy/rose-traditions-4.html

http://www.roseexpert.no/nordic.htm

Stefan

I have something more to add now, after looking at the pictures Daphne Filiberti took at Sangerhausen - I suspect that there are some differences between the Sangerhausen rose and those grown previously in Scandinavia as Rosa x suionum or Mustialanruusu, etc. Its blooms have a characteristic button eye and symmetrical form I've never seen in another 'Banshee', the flowers come in larger clusters than I've seen 'Banshee' do, and the receptacle appears to be both less turbinate and much smoother than typically very glandular receptacle and sepals of 'Banshee'. I do not normally find pictures of other 'Minette' specimens in Scandinavia or elsewhere like that at Sangerhausen, leading me to believe that either wood was never spread from that garden, or it has been slow to spread compared to the dominance of the pre-existing plants. I think more study will be necessary before it's possible to say whether the Sangerhausen 'Minette' is even part of the 'Banshee'/'Mustialruusu'/R. x suionum clan. Mr. Merker's initial judgment synonymizing these roses seems to have been premature. For now, Sangerhausen calling its rose 'Minette' is as good as any other name, and for all I know could be correct.

For Dickerson's entry on 'Minette', see:

rec.gardens.roses thread

I believe there may be confusion stemming from a basic problem. It's quite possible that certain Cinnamomeae roses, when crossed with European OGRs like a gallica, a damask, or an alba, might generate offspring with certain similarities like a turbinate receptacle and bud shape that become red herrings when trying to nail down names and origins. A cross of Rosa cinnamomea and a damask, for instance, might appear to be superficially very close to a hybrid of R. carolina or R. virginiana and the same damask. Vibert was unique for working species into his breeding program, and it would hardly be surprising to find such a cross coming from him, but even if Sangerhausen's 'Minette' is correct, it's still not identical with the roses we know from America and Scandinavia. This is going to take more scientific methodology to solve, so for now, I feel a primary need to emphasize that our 'Banshee'/'Mustialruusu'/R. x suionum of gardens is clearly NOT 'Minette', and work slowly from there.

I don't know, Stephen. At my age, wild speculation is about all that's left. I don't know if I can give it up.
Help me find says Banshee is 5-10 feet tall. That's because there's three different roses there called Banshee. That's the problem.
Myself I think Banshee is not an it: it's a them.
Ann, I was having fun with the one where James Nesbeth sclanderited the kirk. Couldn't figure out what he did, though, just that he was in trouble.
That name turns up again in America and Canada.
Stephen, the leaves on Minette look like Halllie's Rose. That's another oddity about this rose, that the leaves are coarse and rough.
Not pretty and green, like Leonie Bell's description.
Thanks for posting those Nordic roses. I have been slaking to get my hands on some for years. Especially Hurdalrosen.

Please do speculate away - it keeps us all on our toes to have these kinds of discussions, and brings in all kinds of fresh ideas that no one person could ever have alone!

I agree, there are probably different clones that fall under the umbrella of Banshee (as documented well by Ms. Bell), as well as very different cultivars that are called Banshee but don't all deserve to be. Some of the Banshee clones may vary in height, but around five feet matches most of the ones I've seen.

The leaves on your 'Hallie's Rose' are indeed coarse, but I don't know that they look particularly like 'Minette' - plus, your rose doesn't have the long, foliaceous sepals that 'Minette' and 'Banshee' both seem to. I don't think that 'Hallie's Rose' is an alba; based on your picture, it looks more along the lines of a centifolia or hybrid bourbon, or some such.

We'll all have to keep our eyes peeled for a local source of 'Hurdalsrosen' for you!

interesting history! (I love rose history!) Going to have to look up 'conflations' though...

I had a rose that was thought to be Banshee - still trying to kill of the *%$$@ suckers! the rose was a thorny devil, to the point I thought it might have had RRD! It suckered like crazy, rarely bloomed, with a few muddled-looking blooms that had no/little fragrance to me. Dug him out and moved a Buck, Ohio Belle, to his spot to live happily ever after...

Conflations? I was so thankful nobody noticed that my 1870 census turned into a 1970 census-though in 1970 there still was nobody out there.
I was wondering what plant a setaria was. On this old copy of this magazine which they won't let you read, whichever that accomplishes, is a listing of chromosomes, plus the fact that rosa rapa had been re-classified.

Here is a link that might be useful: Botanical magazine

Deb, you didn't get away with it. I figured the language of "nobody out there, just Indians" was a bit non-PC for a government document in 1970.

Ah, ha. Sharp eyes. How would they put that now?
"Nobody could derive from the inhabitants who the inhabitants were."
"The geographical study was derived without input and demographically flawed."
I'd link it, but the website says they put a copyright on this government census they posted.
Somehow I doubt that.
I'm about done trying to do internet genealogy. www.familysearch has their free smatterings. Ancestry.com needs an antitrust suit. There are about ten websites now that lead you back to Ancestry.com.
Yeah, Mike, it's a terrible world we live in now, one where if you're dead, you stay that way.

Setaria has nothing to do with Banshee or Rapa. I was at the library this afternoon and saw your post so I downloaded the rapa reference. I'll try to get it summarized later tonight. Setaria is in the article above it and totally unrelated.
The snippets/teasers are not even getting the search word in many of their shown citations any more. So they think that that would make us want to buy a copy sight unseen? Don't think so. Just keep searching for a library that has already paid access to the right search engine.

I have an Ancestry account (and an NEHGS account), so if you want me to track something down just give a yell. My email address should be on my page. Provide as much info as you can (names, dates, locations) and we'll try to fill in some of the gaps.

Any Nesbeths from Montana whose ancestors were Canadian will do.
There weren't very many people here in the 1800's.
Although there were a lot of New York Nesbeths. What I know is a name and a rose.
Lots of New Yorkers migrated to Canada.
I think their ranch was in Eastern Montana, but maybe not.
There were Irish Nesbeths, too and English, variously spelled Nesbeth, Nesbith, or in England Nesbit.
I never met Hallie. Her husband died some time ago and she lived in Laurel. Montana.
This name and the rose occur in Colorado and Montana, but haven't located this version of Banshee in Canada.

This whole book The Rose Fancier's Manual has plenty of references to rosa rapa, which it says was brought from Newfoundland in 1773, a specific date. I am curious about Baron Louis, described as tal, with muddled flowers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Fancier's manual, 1838

Don't know what was going on in Newfoundland in 1773.

Here is a link that might be useful: map

lOL!! Love this line:

"Yeah, Mike, it's a terrible world we live in now, one where if you're dead, you stay that way."

From the paper "Reclassification of Rosa rapa Bosc by Wilson Lynes, in Brittonia vol 11114, no. 2, pp. 213-219
I have summarized this badly and my comments are enclosed in parentheses.

In 1809 Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc described seven American roses, two had been observed by him in the marshes of North Carolina. Rosa rapa (not from the marshes of NC) was described from French cultures.
Lynes then adds that the identity of rapa is uncertain. He notes that "In naming R. rapa, Bosc used the Lain equivalent of its common English name, Turnip Rose. Apparently he was unaware that the same rose had been described in 1807 by Persoon under the name R. turgida.
(Roses are supposed to carry the species name given at the FIRST description of a rose, so long as the first description isnt of a species already described.)
Going backwards, Lynes then notes that the rose was recorded as R. fraxinifolia in 1802.
(Then comes a black and white photo of the herbarium sheet labeled Rosa rapa from Lindleys herbarium. A stem is shown to have prickles of two distinctly different sizes. Leaves are relatively thin and taper un Banshee-like.)
(page 215) Lynes writes that "Persoon gave the habitat of R. rapa as "Scotia?" and people who cited Persoon "followed Persoon in giving Scotland as the country of origin, but did not express doubt."
(What was Nova Scotia called in the early 1800s? What was Scotland called then?)
Bosc said probably American in origin, Lindley said it was collected in the southern US by Fraser.
Bosc said flowers red, slightly fragrant, one and a half inches or more in diameterflowers at the end of spring. Its hypanthia approach in size those of the turbinate rose (Rosa fracofurtana), its leaves those of the preceding (Rosa virginiana); they are neither as shining nor as coriaceous. .. scarcely more than two or three feet high."
Bosc noted rapa was grown in garden in single, semidouble and double flowers.
(Fig. 3 from Charles Lyells garden in the herbarium of DeCandolle appears to me to have broader leaves and one leaflet approaches the look of Banshee. There is also a bud that looks to have the potential to house many, many petals.)
Crepin wrote of a horticultural variety of R. virginiana called Multiplex" and noted potential similarity to Rosa rapa.
Lynes summarizes by listing rapas differences from R. virginiana.
Then he says that "The related species R. carolina is exceedingly variable" and it is possible for a variety of R. carolina to have the characteristics of R. rapa. And proposes that R. rapa be reclassified as a synonym of R. carolina var. plena.
(My problem with this is probably my ignorance of the variability of R. carolina, because the herbarium sheets in this paper dont look anything like the R. carolinas Ive seen in Botanical Gardens and in my own garden.)

Thanks, Ann for working on that. I've figured all along that story about rosa rapa came from somewere. And may be a distinct plant.
I had another case of gold fever this morning. I was reading over the species section in Stirling Macoboy and Botanica Roses. Suddenly I thought, rosa rugosa is repeat blooming, too. That is, the species is repeat blooming, like the china tea roses. All these years I thought it was bred into them.
Out the back door to check out Hansa. Yep, bright green leaves, and the rose buds looked like Leonie Bell's.
Yes! And they are native to beaches.
Problem was, they are native to the beaches of Japan.
How to discover them in Newfoundland in 1773 with some other kind of bright green leaves?
Rosa nitida is native to the shores of Newfoundland and has bright green leaves. The word means shining. But it is really short.
We are almost to the arctic circle now and frost bite is setting in.
Here are the parents of Therese Bugnet: (Rosa acicularis Lindl ? Rosa rugosa var. kamschatica Regel] ? [Rosa amblyotis C.A.Mey. ? Rosa rugosa var. plena Regel.)
Seed pollen, Betty Bland.
Rose amblyotis C.A. Mey is a cinnamomea cross also native to the Kamchaka peninsula, along with r. kamchatika.
I have forgotten what I was looking for. A name and a home for Hallie's Rose?
The parents of Banshee? A long lost rose named rapa? And how did George Washington get a repeat blooming rose long before Queen Josephine?
It's something more. It's something like the Good Book, written by somebody who went there, not 200 years ago, but recently.
Maybe it will happen sometime.
Here's a picture of r. kamschatica, introduced in 1770.

Here is a link that might be useful: R.Kamchatica

I will take up the search.

It's interesting to find a number of people with the surname of Nesbett in Massachusetts and Maine. There's a marriage record for a Thomas Nesbett in 1743 Boston. After that, several of them show up in the 1830s thru the 1850s a bit north of Boston. By 1860, a number of them were in Maine. But who knows if there's a relationship.

They could have been an "English" variant, but there was a wave of Scots and Scots-Irish arriving in the early to mid 1700s.

In the 1600s (mostly) and 1700s (on and off) officials, and people in general, were less precise with spelling names and indicating relationships. For example, sometimes "mother-in-law" meant "step-mother", not a spouse's mother. When ministers wrote down names in church records they may have been guessing at the spelling.

In 1880 there's a John Nesbeth, age 39, carpenter, living in Vestal, Deer Lodge, MT. He was born in Canada, but the census reports that both of his parents were born in Ireland.

By 1900 there are a number of Nesbitts, Nisbetts, Nisbets who were born in Canada and living in Montana. No "Nesbeth" proper, although census takers may have gotten their information secondhand and spelled the names as best they could.

There's not much census data on the general area before 1860, which makes sense when you consider that these territories weren't states yet and they were very sparsely populated. Who's going to ride a horse or drive a wagon for hundreds of miles through the wilderness to see if someone *might* be there? :-)

In 1850 there is no one with that surname in the Utah Territory, and two in the Oregon Territory. Neither of the two were born in Canada.

What was the timeframe of Hallie's life, roughly? I searched for "Hallie" in Montana. There are quite a few of them. Apparently it was a popular name in the late 1800s. I was trying to find a likely maiden name for Hallie, but it was difficult to narrow down not knowing approximately when she lived.

I surmise that you didn't know the given name of Hallie's husband. If that's wrong please let me know.

Forgot to add...I'll check Canadian records over the weekend.

Had a computer snafu. Darn internet quit working after a power surge. My son sez this little black box to my right crashed. He unplugs it, then plugs it back in.
Darn kids.
I called up my brother to buttonhole him on this Nesbeth problem. He said Nesbeth was her maiden name. "I said, "Spell it."
"N-E-S-B-I-T-H."
"Are you sure of that?"
"No."
He fell to cussing his new neighbor, He Who Must Not Be Named, who chopped Hallie's roses. Said he crawled under a car parked on top of my Hallie's Rose, and attempted to dig it out and resurrect it but no luck. So Could I get him a sucker?
I think I'm taking cuttings. I did it once and it rooted easily, but could not get it through the winter.
My brother said Hallie's first husband was Carl George, who had the ranch over at Red Lodge, and her second husband's name was Preye.
So I said, "I thought you said this rose was found growing on her husband's ranch? Was it his or hers?"
He couldn't remember. He said, "Well, Hallie was the one with all the roses, you know."
You can see this project sinking into quicksand. A search for Nesbet Family Homestead-Canada on google got me one at Wikopedia. My Mac computer turns Wikopedia into algebra.
A reverend James Nesbet/Nesbit was mildly famous and seemed to have something to do with this homestead. I don't know if he was the one who sclanderited the kirk.
Hallie just passed away a few years ago.
Well none of this gets Hallie's ancestors located in Canada with the black and white photograph of them standing by the rose.
But it's fun to try.
This weekend I am transplanting my female holly. Her fat bottom has grown completely over her husband. The little guy is under there, still a twig. Manly enough, berries have appeared directly above. Five berries.
I keep trying to persuade myself to just cut her back and move him instead.
She is ten years old and I am afraid of croaking her.
But I think the PG hydrangea is going to need the space.
The Endless Summer hydrangeas I bought are under a bench now, but completely fried. They are native to boggy beaches in Japan. I wish I'd read the stuff at Vintage Gardens about hydrangeas first, not last.
Lovely here, we have had a big rain. The temperature is a wonderful 70 degrees and the smoke is gone.

Glad to hear that the air has cleared.

The rose I know as Banshee would not suffer from having a car parked over it, and would probably survive most attempts at eradicating it. It would likely survive a nuclear war, but I haven't tested that scenario. :-)

My SO's father has a Banshee that has been on their property line for god-knows-how-long. It certainly existed before their purchase of the house. It grows in a wooded area next to the driveway and has suckered far from the original plant (it's hard to figure where the original plant was/is). The suckers pop up through the packed down dirt and stone on the driveway. They've come up from under the RV that is parked there for months at a time. They grow and bloom in the shade.

The suckers come up 30 feet apart. Just amazing. Banshee might be a cross between a rose and an invasive weed, it would be reasonable to hypothesize. :-)

Back to Hallie, the mystery woman. Although I've not looked at the Canadian records yet, I have found Hallie Nesbetts and Nisbitts and Nisbetts. Then there are those whose surname is spelled with one "T" instead of a double "T".

There was a Hallie Nisbett born in 1909 Pennsylvania, which would have made Hallie well into her 90s when she died. In the 1930s, there were Nisbetts/Nisbets/Nesbetts/Nesbets (and other variations) living in Montana who were either born in PA, or whose father was born in PA. There were also folks with the same surname variations who, as adults, listed their parents' birthplace as Canada.

I could not find a Hallie Nisbeth/Nisbett/Nesbeth/Nesbett/etc. in Montana in any of the censuses. But she may not have been there yet. It's possible that she may not have been born at the time of the 1930 census -- the last census made public.

I would guess the 1940 census might tell us more, but that's not due out until 2010.

Montana has a number of Historical and Genealogical societies. It might be worth the effort to contact some of the ones near where Hallie lived and see if they have some information.

Another idea would be to visit an area library and go through local newspapers that might contain her obituary and, perhaps, her husband's obituary too. If you know where she's buried the cemetery records might be available. Any of those sources might tell us something more about her.

Her first husband is also difficult to track. There were several Carl/Karl Georges living in Idaho, but not yet in Montana. Since we're not too sure of his age, I checked WWI and WWII draft registrations. Of course, WWI is probably quite a bit early for him, which is too bad because WWI registrations contain the name of the closest living relative and an employer's name.

I'm sure the WWII registrations contain much of the same info, but that info is guarded for now in order to protect the privacy of those folks who are still living. There's that "70 year" rule; federal records containing personal info cannot be released until the record is 70 years old. States have varying rules about their records, and some states are more strict than others.

Until I get a bead on Hallie, it will be hard to trace her back to her ancestors. But I'll keep at it and will do more research this weekend.

I'm glad your male holly is virile, even if he's on the puny side. Do you fertilize with viagara? :-)

From Wikipedia:
"Nisbet Homestead Farm, also known as the Old Stone House, is located near the LaSalle County, Illinois town of Earlville. Though the structure is close to Earlville it is actually located north of Earlville, in DeKalb County. the homestead is a stone structure, the only one in DeKalb County. The stone house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, having been added on May 31, 1984.[3]"

"The homestead was built by Matthew Nisbet who immigrated from Scotland to Canada in 1818. In 1841 Nisbet came to DeKalb County, Paw Paw Township, and constructed a two story log cabin, a temporary home he lived in while he constructed Old Stone House. The home is constructed of ten by four feet blocks of stone which were hauled from Ottawa [Illinois] via ox cart. Nisbet's home took 15 years to build and has remained in the Nisbet family since its completion."

That pretty much sums up the article, unless you want to know more about the construction of the home and the outbuildings. But it sounds like it could be a branch of the family you're following.

I found Karl George at familysearch.com Born Nov. 19, 1902, died December 1974 in Laurel. No marriage listed. Let's say he and Halie got married when they were 20, in 1922.In those days, marriages weren't recorded in Montana except at the church. And a lot of the time, nobody bothered to get a birth certificate.
I found my ancestors deaths, recorded in exquisitly hand written documents at the courthouse.
But that's all.
When my parents came of age, 1940's, you didn't have to take a driving test. You paid 5 bucks, got a license. My mother got a license to teach school with a six week course in Billings.
One of my uncles was legally non-existent. Born at home, couldn't deal with school, never learned to read. He worked as a cowboy. No social security card, no driver's license.
Most of the original settlers came here in 1868 for the gold. There were just a few trappers before that. A big land promotion brought more in the 1890's.
Traveling in Montana was hair-raising until they put the freeway in around 1967. Before that we were isolated and there were very few people.
Hallie's children took her away to a rest home in another state.
I looked up Baltimore Belle yesterday to see if it looked much like Hallie's Rose, but didn't think so. BB looks like more of a rambler. The extreme cold hardiness and height of Hallie's rose is a real curiousity. It doesn't sucker much at all.
Hansa in the back yard is going all over the place.

I have nothing of value to add to this discussion but want my very own Banshee to be included. It comes from Prentiss, Maine, north of Bangor, the old family farm in interior Maine. Family legend has it that it is so cold in winter that a pan of water thrown out of the upstairs window will be ice before it hits the ground. It was so cold that the barn and house were connected by a passage so that the animals could be tended in winter. I know this is true because on two occasions, the barn burned down and the house went with it. Something about playing with matches on one occasion...

Anyway, the rose survived this kind of cold. My father took a start home with him to Pennsylvania twenty or so years ago, and has passed bits of it along to all the family. I have one here in California growing in a large pot, where I will keep it so it won't spread past the boundaries I set. Greg and Ron took one look at our family mystery rose, and in one voice, said "Banshee".

Rosefolly

I wonder what one of those plant gene tests costs, anyway? So, Paula, when was your family farm originally started? That might set a date for the rose, though they could have gotten it a long time later.

That branch of my father's family was his mother's side, and they came to Massachusetts before 1640, then gradually spread out. The ones I'm descended from ended up in Maine but I don't know when. Maybe the 1700's? I would venture to guess that they were there a long time before the rose. I know that my grandmother's mother grew the rose, but whether she was the first one in the family to do so or not, I don't know. I could ask my father's cousins.

Rosefolly

Kaylah, I sent out an inquiry. Senior family members are confident that the rose was growing on the farm in the 1880's, and was apparently the delight of my great-grandmother. She prized it highly and lavished it with manure that probably was meant for the potato field. They speculated that the rose may well have been there much earlier, but do not know this for sure. This was a small family farm with little cash and many children, so money was not ever spent on frivolous things like flowers. Instead there was a long tradition of starts of this rose being passed along. As recently as the 1960's my father got his start, from which mine came. This was after the farm had passed out of our family.

I understand that the rose is no longer growing there.

Rosefolly

I was thinking about my great grandmother who died in 1960 at 92. I was five. That would make her birth occurring around 1868, so adding twenty years to reach marriageable age, would get you to the 1880's.
We still have Granny Mann's pocketbook. It is full of letters from a group of people trying to get back the family land. There was a Dutch farm where Trinity Church in New York City is now. All of the children signed off their rights to this farm except one. The descendants were still trying to sue over this up until the 1930's.
You can read about this story if you do some googling.
Every year on 9-11, I think to myself that America is a big place. We should never again make such a target as this, where so many people can die so quickly.
When they were discussing what to do with WTC after the massacre, I kept thinking to myself, "Put back the family farm."
Yesterday I was cleaning up books, and my old copy of Suzy Verrier's Rosa Gallica turned up. There was a notation about a gallica named Roland, which was found in Western Canada.
Here's more wild speculation: The flowers look somewhat like Maiden's Blush, the suckering might come from rosa gallica, and the shiny green leaves could come from rosa nitida. and I know nothing about chromosomes, diploids, tetraploids, etc, to even tell if that's possible.
None of this makes it possible to locate the long-lost rosa rapa or gets Hallie's Rose back to Canada. It's probably more fun just to wonder.
It's established that Hallie's Rose is not Banshee, and so far turns up nowhere in the books, except at High Country Roses, though I think theirs has more petals.
And I think it crossed with an American rose someplace.
Of all my roses, the leaves look mostly like Madame Hardy, though Madame Hardy never has two extra leaves on the new growth.
And she's shorter. So is Quatre Saison.
Myself, I don't understand people who find history boring, who do not stop to think and wonder about those whose footsteps on the land came before.
My mother's Johnny-jump-ups still come up around here, though I never planted them. They must have been in something she gave me.

Many years ago I obtained a form of Banshee from the blackspot resistance USDA experimental plot at Beltsville, MD (begun in the late 1950s to mid 60s) which was listed as Great Maidens Blush (this is an alba connection) and I believe that it had come from Bobbic and Adkins in NJ. It is fragrant, turbinate, and more double (it balls) than the form at my sister's home in Albany NY which doesn't ball up there. Leonie mentioned to me that there were several forms of Banshee and she was unsure how they all were related. It doesn't preclude the fact that roses do mutate and I would guess with all of the suckering there has been great opportunity for that variance when factoring in the time and the many places it has been grown. I am not remembering any significant hips on it, but it may be because most of the blooms do not open readily for me. I suspect that suckers are the most readily available means of propagation for folks who would share plants.

PS - I obtained several other interesting plants from that site including a plant that may be be a rugosa - blanda cross that Leonie said I should study as "Zitkala". It looks like a red Terese Bugnet, but it doesn't rebloom. I sent it to someone in Minnosota and they said it was hardy there.

I'm not that concerned where it came from, I'm interested in Leonie's claim that she found a Banshee with fewer petals. I'd love to have one like that. I've got a repeat blooming virginiana cross ('scandens'? I got it from a local guy) growing near my Banshee in hopes the bees will do a back cross for me. So far nothing. The repeater hardly ever makes hips, so I'm kind of tempted to just put a pure virginiana nearby, but if I do too much of that sort of thing, they can all cross with each other and ignore the Banshee. Someone sent me some kind of native rose from Minnesota which I put way over under some cherry trees. Maybe when I have to start digging out Banshee suckers I can put them there and see what happens. Ann, didn't you say that some of the Canadian crosses look like there is Banshee in them?

This spring, Banshee stood alone, rather wonderfully as a survivor of the Easter late freeze that seriously zapped a lot of my old roses. It was also a dry winter followed by a dry spring. Banshee opened handsomly.
If I thought I saw some similarities with some of my roses of Canadian origin, I didn't see it this spring.
Bloom time didn't match any other group (the Damasks almost didn't make it. Albas made it with fits and starts. Gallicas mostly were even later; among the Gallicas only Alika was a true wonder and simply startlingly beautiful...but not in sync with Banshee. And they're close enough that their conditions are nearly identical.

Donna, your 'Scandens' is probably what's generally traded as a clone of Rosa palustris; I've long suspected this is some sort of cross with a China. It's definitely ripe for breeding, although I'm not sure what it will do mixed with the ones you mentioned. It's a diploid, so if it sets hips it would probably be best to use it as the seed parent (tetraploid pollen is usually more fertile on diploids than the other way around, and many garden roses are tetraploid). You're likely to get once-blooming seedlings if you cross it with a once-bloomer; repeaters are more likely if the other parent is fully remontant.

'Banshee' is an incredible rose, and I think I'll always admire its amazing ability to combine extreme toughness with such tender beauty. Kaylah, you really should get a piece of the real one to compare! It should grow with abandon in Montana; the piece I gave my aunt and uncle in North Dakota a few years back has thrived next to the outhouse when all their other roses bought from local nurseries perished. If I was back home, I'd dig you a sucker myself.

I'm watching a plant I received from Canada under another name because it seems to open more easily than my older clone from southern Louisiana (which seems just about identical to a few I saw locally in the Minneapolis suburbs, FWIW). This rose sure gets around, doesn't it?

What's the oldest written reference to Banshee, the rose?

Kaylah, I just thought I'd tell you that my inquiry about Banshee to the family elders has produced some fascinating email, some stories about the old days in Maine I never heard before now. It has been an eye opener, and I have enjoyed the bits of family lore.

As for your question, our family came to farm that particular piece of land in the mid 1840's, so that is the earliest that rose could have grown in that place.

Rosefolly

Ann, I really don't think much was written about this rose during the vast majority of its early history. All we have is legend and anecdote, but I think they generally point us in the right direction. I wouldn't even know how to begin searching; something tells me the earliest history of this rose occurred in very old Scandinavia, where it is said to have been brought by Vikings, who alone could have brought together roses like American species, damasks and albas as early as 1000 C.E. Perhaps they would have used native rose hips they found as an excellent source of scurvy-preventing vitamin C for their long sea voyages home, and the seeds were spread that way. Speculation with no literature to back it up yet, to be sure!

There is an alternative to genetic studies for determining ancestry of a puzzling cross. I'm interested in hardy citrus, and I keep finding parallels between citrus and roses. Both include tropical, subtropical, and temperate species that have been crossed all kinds of ways. The example I have in mind is the Yuzu, a tart citrus fruit prized by Japanese cooks with a loose sweet edible skin. It is much hardier than most citrus. A number of crosses have been made between Citrus inchangensis and Satsuma resulting each time in something remarkably like Yuzu.
It's true that when you make a cross so wide that the result is ovule sterile, as seems the case with Banshee, that you seem to get a lot of sports. We have assumed that the variations in Banshee are sports, but what if some of them are the same cross repeated? What could we try crossing to see if we can get Banshee again? The candidates I would consider would be our various native species and damasks, centifolias, gallicas. When you are out in your garden in spring, if you want an excuse to spend a bit more time there, you might want to do some deliberate pollination by one of these species onto one of the others that you know makes hips. Mark the blossom stem in case it makes a hip. If it does, be sure to include what the pollen was if you are doing several crosses. Experts go through a lot of trouble to keep the bees away and to get ripe pollen, but I think this is a fine job for some of us worthless lackadaisical wannabees to do our stuff. All we want is some seed from one plant that makes seedlings that look nothing like the parent. If you don't mind sowing some virginiana seed in hopes that you'll find one extremely different seedling, it won't matter all that much if the bees got to the flower too. (Although it might be better if the flower can't find anything except the weird foreign pollen you added.) If a couple of years from now someone on this forum says hey, I crossed this and that and one of the seedlings is looking a lot like Banshee, we will all sit up and take notice. Then others will try the same cross and maybe we'll prove, us simple amateurs, something that has had us wondering for a long time. One or two of the big name rose people who pay attention to something besides HT's will eventually write it up in a book and we'll all have to find some other mystery to solve.

Donna, that's a great idea - although we should pursue genetic testing as well (which they've also done in citrus to great effect). I think either a pure damask or an alba with R. virginiana would be my first choice. Perhaps even a gallica would do it.

I'm actually doing an outdoor hardiness test of Citrus ichangensis here this winter, along with Rosa gigantea. It's interesting to note how many of the C. ichangensis in the trade are actually "Ichang lemon" hybrids, and not the true species. I'm anxious to see what happens!

I started a new thread on scandens, but in regard to Stefan's comments on Banshee: I knew that tetraploid x diploid make a triploid. In apples this tends to give big fruit with good seed production but poor pollen production. I believe roses are the opposite. In apples the rare triploids and tetraploids make big apples with big cells, juicy. Apple breeders look for big leaves in apple seedlings because they tend to be associated with bigger fruit. Maybe we should look at the leaves on our roses to see if there is a relationship.
Regarding roses, a triploid can make pollen with one gene or two, mostly with one I think. The one gene pollen would go well with diploids, the two gene pollen with tetraploids. Triploids tend to have low seed production, if any, right? So pollen from a damask or gallica would have two genes, go to a native rose producing a triploid dead end, Banshee. It COULD be done with an alba I suppose, because though they are hexaploids, their pollen will only have 2 genes in it. Whatever crossed with our native rose, it must have had a lot of petals, so it wasn't a wild thing like R. canina. And it doesn't seem to have happened very many times, as most Banshees seem so uniform. But maybe no one was really working at it.
My approach to attempting back crosses has just been to put the plants close together, but now and then I pull the petals off a Banshee bloom and rub them on a scandens bloom. The scandens hardly ever makes a hip, I have seen only one or two on Ronnie's 4 big plants, so I'm probably wasting my time with it. Once my ditch rose or the one from up north start blooming, I'll maybe have a chance of a Banshee backcross. Likewise, if I had a nice damask in bloom, plenty of gallicas to choose from, and a semiplena alba, I could try crossing them to the native roses to try to recreate Banshee.