On the trail of R. palustris scandens
Stefan,
I'd been meaning to respond to your comments on my "scandens" or whatever it it. I just don't see any sign of china in it, nice theory though, I can't believe I never thought of it. Malcolm did have a single dusky rose china, hmmmm Bermuda's Kathleen.... that reminded me of it. Seeing it again a couple of years later, I couldn't believe I'd ever thought there was a resemblence. I'd just done a lot more looking at roses by that time. I sent a sprout my scandens to Z3 Minnesota to see if it was really hardy, it is.
But let's just play around with the idea. Palustris is the only native rose found in Florida. It is a diploid. There's an early settler, 1700's, someone with lots of slaves so their wife can goof off in the garden all she wants. She's imported some roses from Cuba and Bermuda, including chinas, ie diploids. She sees or hears of some roses growing wild in the swamp, sends her trusted gardener to go dig some. They bloom but once a year but look graceful and make pretty hips. She or her gardener plants some seeds, they get a cross, keep it for a novelty, though it doesn't repeat. A correspondent from New Orleans asks for seeds of the cross, she sends some hips, which include some selfed seeds. The fellow in NO plants a hedge of them, and they all look different, some crossed back to china which are single and don't compare to existing chinas, some like palustris, but one reblooms. He chops out the inferior china like plants, and later digs suckers from the plaustris-like rebloomer and plants them. Friends beg him for sprouts. They get passed hand to hand, treasured and finally one winds up in a small roadside nursery where my friend buys it and brings it to Tennessee, where he kindly gives me a start. The Florida gardener and the New Orleans gardener have corresponded back and forth, but the Florida gardener dies young and the new wife destroys all sign of her, including her letters. In the hot humid climate, the New Orleans heirs throw away boxes of rotting letters from their great grandfather's attic. There were the clues for the much admired family rosebush. By chance, this clone has almost entirely palustris genes with only the reblooming and a few other china genes. So there's our reblooming palustris.
I think others have dealt with the mystery more simply, saying that virginiana blooms so much later, that the palustris gene makes it bloom once and the virginiana gene later. But I find the only factor in blooming time seems to be having enough moisture. Ronnie waters his and they mostly bloom all summer long.
I personally think this is a great rose. It is upright, has elegant buds, pretty pink SD fragrant flowers, reblooms, has delicate foliage like a little willow tree, fall color, red stems in winter, hardly any thorns and those down low so my plants are both right where we go in and out of the garden, and it suckers just enough you can gift a friend now and then. But what is it???
Has anyone ever heard of another species cross where the reblooming capacity suddenly appeared from two once bloomers? Isnt that the theory of the fall blooming damask, that it's a cross to the late blooming musk rose? Well, there's another possibility, that's a diploid, small flowers though I think the cluster flowering is dominant, scent that wafts on the air like scandens, delicate flowers, but then there are those great big thorns. No, I think not. Chinas aren't nearly as thorny.
Are there variations on scandens, or are they all the same? I'm very curious.
Comments (12)
joan_m
donna_in_tnOriginal Author
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