The Bishop....Sherando....

wait, let me think about this... The Bishop from Sherando

Have Belle de Crecy (from Sherando) - check
Have the Bishop (from Sherando) - check
Getting Alice Vena (from Vintage) - we'll see

Argh -- too bad Sherando doesn't ship.

I have two of those three -- sounds like I must get a cutting of the Bishop and I'm sure I'll love that one too. :)

I have The Bishop. I wouldn't call it purple. Mine is mostly pink with naturally mauve highlights It's a survivor, I'll give it that. Withstands rabbits and antlered vermin and rebounds in the worst conditions.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:317943}}

There are several different The Bishop roses around. Most probably Shrando Bishop is different from Dr Andre's Bishop. Sherando Bishop is purple.
Olga

What I'm interested in is whether or not the Sherando Bishop picks up the bad habits of mine as it gets older.

My favorite purple is a Not Reine de Violets, which seems almost certainly a hybrid china. It's more violet than purple, but is a very good rose. Another one nobody has mentioned is Hippolyte.

John, I'd be interested in the parentage of that hybrid purple. It really isn't obvious from the photo.

Alicia, MG, do you want to see a picture of Hippolyte?

Carla

Of course! :)

Alicia, My close up is not that great but here goes.
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I know the Europeans view and classify colors differently than we do. In my opinion, this is not as true a purple color than some others. People all perceive colors and shades differently though.
Carla

Mad Gallica,
I don't know where you got your "not Reine des Violets", I'm sure there's many of them around, but I have one which turned out to be Belle de Crecy.

We picked it up as a cutting at the local rose show. It's definitely not what I've seen as Belle de Crecy, since the flowers are much larger. I'm fairly certain it's a hybrid china of some sort. The odd thing about it is that at some times of year it has a definite peppery fragrance to the leaves. It's also enormous. I try to keep it down to about 5 ft, but that's a bit of a struggle. I would like to find out what it is since it's been a very reliable rose. It also has the virtue of generally staying put.

Carla, is that photo washed out? It's definitely several shades lighter than my Hippolyte, which is bordering on black-purple.

I was looking for pictures of Hippolyte. All I seem to have are ones in OGR palettes from the local show.

{{gwi:317949}}

Madam Hardy, Chloris, Oelleit Flammand, Charles de Mills and Hippolyte.

'Hippolyte' for sure. Wonderful rich color and a reasonably well-behaved plant. So many of the Gallica-China hybrids are lanky and floppy, a trait I find is cured only by pruning, generally once in late Winter and at least once in August.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hippolyte

belle herminie. Starts out burgundy red in bud and has a beautiful deep lavender flower. rogue valley.

My favorite purple is Tuscany Superb, and in my zone 4 climate and soil it is really, truly purple. I have seen it in public gardens where it tends more towards crimson-purple, but mine are always deep, dark purple. Perhaps it enjoys my mountain breezes? (Mine came from Pickering). Because of this, it is in my top five of all roses!

Celeste

TUSCANY SUPERB, AFTER THE RAIN.....

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I obtained what I call The Bishop from Mrs. Keays property in Calvert County MD. Leonie Bell thought it was The Bishop and that I should try it. It is double purple with lavender on the reverse side of petals, light of substance like Shailers Provence, and wonderfully fragrant.

Well, that TS makes my Hippolyte look kind of pitiful!
Celeste, that is a beautiful shot.
Mad Gallica, although it's hard for my camera to capture purple tones, that is what I get. Remember, it's much warmer here and Hippolyte is only 3 yrs. old. Maybe it will get darker. If it only re-bloomed I could probably see some darker colors in fall.

Carla

Thanks for your responses everyone. Carla thanks for posting the picture, it's beautiful. The color of the flowers does look very different from madgallica's palette however.

Celeste I love the pic of Tuscany Superb. I wonder why your roses are more purple than others', if it's the cooler temps?

'Tuscany Superb' is more of a pink-burgundy in my zone 4 garden, though the older flowers may shift to purple just before the petals fall off an older bloom.

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'Tuscany Superb'

I'll admit I have NEVER seen a true purple rose, even among the gallicas.

I have seen a true purple; it's a China hybrid that's at the NC Botanical Garden. It mildews some in the summer. Sadly its identity is unknown.

Alicia, did you inquire at the Garden to it's id?

Carla

Yes, and it has a name tag that simply says Hybrid China. :(

My parents grow one hybrid china that my family bought in southern Louisiana as 'Hippolyte', which it isn't (it has prickles, for one thing). It seems just tender enough that it doesn't bloom regularly in zone 4 - there were no flowers this year, but last year it was absolutely covered. My mother pronounced it the most fragrant rose in the garden, though. The flowers regularly open lighter and the buds are pink, but the color passes quickly to a wonderfully rich purple. Here are two pictures - please feel free to ignore the rose slug damage and the trash-bag-covered wheelbarrow backdrop:

{{gwi:317952}}

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The wildest-colored hybrid china I know of is 'Cardinal de Richelieu', with that frosty, smoky, slate-purple color that doesn't even look like it belongs on a living thing at all.

Carla I sent an email to the Botanical Garden yesterday and got more information, although they still do not know the identity of the rose. A Garden intern who was interested in old roses researched the rose and the closest match he could find was Old Homestead. However, Old Homestead is described as having some rebloom and the rose in the Garden never reblooms.

You guys are killing me with these photos. :) I'm definitely going to have to start a purple rose collection. So far I have a couple of Veilchenbleus and Violette... they need company of other purples...

I've wondered before if mine might be the same as what's being studied under the name "Old Homestead" or "Homestead" - but I've never seen any reference to that cultivar reblooming (not even Vintage, where many things seem to be capable of repeating when they wouldn't in the rest of the country). One thing Vintage says in its listing that does differ from my plant is, "the paler color blushing out over the whole with age" - this does not happen to my plant, unless it's something that only happens because of the climate in California. One picture of "Double Plum" on HelpMeFind.com looks strikingly similar to it, too, but I'd rather be more convinced than that. I know I can't afford to buy them all just for comparison! :)

The lady at the NC Botanical Garden thought that Old Homestead reblooms; you're right, Vintage does not describe it as a rebloomer.

If I'm in Chapel Hill next spring when it blooms I'll take some pics and see if it's fragrant.

If I'm remembering certain things correctly, and if I understood what I read in the first place, the history of what is commonly called 'Hippolyte', is even more confused than that of 'Reine de Violettes'. There was something about the rose that was being called 'Alice Vena' turning out to the same as a 'Hippolyte' imported from Europe, and who knows why they had the names they had in the first place... and currently 'Alice Vena' isn't at all the same rose as 'Hippolyte' and doesn't seem to be the same 'Alice Vena' as was described in that article, and the word 'thornless' is conspicuous by its absence in any of this.

It is good to keep in the back of your head that in the mid-20th century, when most Eastern found roses went into circulation, that they didn't tend to use study names, but very badly wanted to connect historical names with living roses. It started with Mrs. Keays, who was dealing with a distinctive enough set of roses that she could get away with it, but when it wandered off to the cold climate once-bloomers, things got hairy. The contemporary descriptions of so many of these roses are practically identical. Gertrude Jekyll, who knew and understood roses, had Village Maid and Rosa Mundi hopelessly confused. You won't confuse photographs of those two, but the written descriptions are a different matter.

MG and Carla, where did you get your Hippolytes?

The Vintage Catalog describes 3 versions of The Bishop -- The Bishop aka L'Eveque of Graham Thomas, Mrs. Keay's The Bishop, aka Double Plum and Velours Episcopal, and the Huntington The Bishop. For those of you with The Bishop, do you know which version you have, and do you have pictures?

Some year I am going to start my vacation the day my Duc d'Angouleme throws its first bloom and then just sit outside and watch those miracle buds. They start so innocently, small, roundish, magenta. Then the bloom, neat and magenta-pink the first day, slowly paling through the pink spectrum into the lavenders. Vintage has it as a custom root. Not to be confused with the Duchesse d'Angouleme, ethereal, shell-like and delicately pink and white. The Duc is well-behaved, shares an arbor equitably with Sombreuil, and has no real disease problems here in California's North Bay Area, primarily powdery mildew after the bloom season. It's not a big, splashy rose but oh my!

Katie

I think mine came from Vintage.

Carla

Your discussion of Hippolyte, Double Plum, Old Homestead and Alice Vena interests me very much. A rose often sold in Sweden as Hippolyte is actually most often a found rose and is now referred to as the Zinnia rose or "the Zinnia Complex". It looks very much like a dark purplish red zinnia and is impossible to confuse with the true Hippolyte once one is aware of the misnomer. The photo on HMF that is most like it in shape is Lee Sherman's picture of Alice Vena, a rose not sold in Sweden. But our Zinnia Rose is very dark. Does the Old Homestead rose look anything like a zinnia? Can't find a picture of it.

To answer the question:
my favourite purple Hybrid China is Cardinal de Richelieu.

Marianne, I know of two pictures of Old Homestead/Homestead Hybrid China online-

This one:
http://www.raisingrarities.com/rarities.htm

and

Vintage Gardens:
http://www.vintagegardens.com/rose_content.aspx?typ=&cat_id=18&product_id=722

You'll have to be the judge of whether it looks like a zinnia! :)

No, it didn't look much like a zinnia or a pompon dahlia. Too bad, it would have been nice if it had been the same as our Zinnia Rose.