Thanks everyone. All great feedback. I used it as an opportunity to practice my meager pruning skills, and basically hacked most of the branches down ton 12-ish inches. It looks a little like a modern tea rose after pruning, but this should give it plenty of rest while it rebuids, and in a shape I like. Boy do I know about resilient. For a couple of years I had a Madame Plantier still planted in the 2-3 gallon black pot that it was in when I won at the el cerrito celebration several years ago. It sat on a hot concrete patio, mostly not watered, completely neglected for a couple years. Assuming it was really really dead (sung like the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, for entertainment value), I reached down to pick it up and toss it, and something in me decided to try to see if it was actually still alive. So I watered it a few times. And wouldn't ya know it, from under the soil, it sent up a couple new basal canes. The old canes and the old stump were dead, but something new came up from the roots. After all that time. I repotted it into a 5 gallon pot last spring, and this year it is covered with little buds just waiting to open. I'm hoping the same happens with my Rose du Roi. Thanks! -kmama

Hi Gerry, this is a good shoot of 'Eugène Furst';o) 'Rose du Roi' is a Portland, and she's very different in foliage, growing habit and flower shape. Flowers are flat rosettes in a (sometime dull) cerise-red, flushed purple, and very fragrant. Foliage is pale green, dense, like 'Jacques Cartier'. This pretty Rose grows in a compact bush, no more than 120 cm high (4'). Hope to have still flowers in my plant to take a pic for you, tomorrow. Ciao!

Kmama, suckering roses, such as gallicas or the wild Rosa californica, expand and send up new flowering canes via underground rhizomes, eventually forming a thicket or patch. My Rose du Roi of commerce has been in the ground just 3 years and has yet to do much of that (so, perhaps not as vigorous that way as some. For many years I have had an unnamed mossy pink gallica-type that, really, is a weed, though with a very full and beautiful, well-perfumed flower. Every spring I need to circumscribe its perimeter with a shovel to keep the patch around 5' diameter, and more than a year after digging up one population of it, I am still digging it up! I always take care to never plant that one anywhere near the "civilized" part of the garden.) Thus far, the canes of my Rose du Roi have not exceeded about 2.5', so I can't imagine pegging it, but, anyway, each cane puts out several branches without pegging. The leaves are very healthy (saying something, this year) and cover the plant well. Current flowers are about 4" in diameter. This is one of my favorite rose flowers of all: beautiful deep red-going-to-purple, heavy scent, huge number of petals arranged in intricate swirls, flower flat and quartered. Just love it -- it is more beautiful in person than most of the photos on HMF would indicate (tough rose to photograph).

Hi, all. I thought I had totally put this issue behind me for now. I had accepted the fact that this rose is currently unidentified, and I was fine with that . . . until a little earlier this morning. While searching for something completely unrelated, I happened upon a photo of Souvenir du Dr. Jamain. Reading the description, I realized that I can (with some degree of certainty) at least place my mystery rose into the hybrid perpetual category -- whether it's actually SdDJ, I can't tell you. The foliage and growth pattern are exactly what my other HPs are out there doing. Nice soft, fat leaves, and canes that are shooting up to the sky. I've searched these forums to see if anyone has posted photos of SdDJ, but I can't find much. Lots of discussions about him and the other HPs, but not a photo -- rats! If you grow SdDJ, can you tell me about him? If you have some good photos that show him and his characteristics well, that would be super? Thanks, Connie