R. xanthina "Canary Bird" AND R. primula, both
are a must in my opinion. They have everything: health, beauty, fragrance, good vase live (cut the whole branch), early bloom time, gracefull bush shape, beautiful leaves and wonderful hips.

R. x pteragonis or R. sericea omeiensis - at least one. Thorns are so beutiful on young canes. Especially when light shines through them. Flowers are really interesting in my opinion too. Four petels instead of five, at least on R. sericea omeiensis, don't remember about another one.

R. virginiana "Plena" - has very nice fall color, veautiful hips and suckers like crazy :)

R. canina is the main wild rose of my chidhood. For me it is the essence of wild roses, can get BS.

R. harisonii "Pioneer Rose" - love the blooms, but gets BS badly here. Also not the easiest rose to turn into graceful plant.

R. moschata "The Musk Rose" - I tried the one with single flowers and it was beautiful, but was fully defoliated from mid June on. Also later bloom time then most spring blooming roses was not a good thing in my area with high JBs pressure.

I always wanted to grow R. moyesii "Geranium" and R. foetida (both), but because of high BS pressure here never tried them.

Why you don't have R. sancta (Holy Rose of Abyssinia) on your list? It is really pretty. Not sure about resistance, saw it in spring and it was breathtaking.

Olga

Do you have enough land to let them become the full sized specimens that they can be?
You may not have the cold that stunts some (Cherokee) or the tight acidic clay that slows the spread of others (nitida, carolina, )
The two of yours that I have trouble growing are R. foetida bicolor and persica. They may not like the clay, or it may be, as some books suggest, that they need to be repropagated every three years. I do know they grow really well in Montreal.
You want Canary Bird and primula because they are such very early bloomers. And some years I've gotten six weeks of bloom from primula. length of bloom is totally temperature dependent.
Pteragonis and sericea are similar, Pteragonis from Pickering is more vigorous for me. Not to be planted near a walking path, but so very interesing especially when back lit by sunlight.
Moschata is a must for the scent and for the rebloom and for the history.
Add Rosa sancta to this list for the history, for its having been found in the tomb of a pharoh. And because it fills spaces beautifully.
R. canina, for the beauty of the plant and hips at this time of year.
Pomifera is extremely cold resistant, I don't know how it will do as you are a zone warmer than a friend of mine who grows it.
Cherokee- can you control it? Got a big wall? And welder's gloves?

We really are two different people and live two states apart.
It's neat how our lists converge.

I do not grow any of the roses you list, but I do grow Cantabrigiensis. Perhaps you already grow it. In case you do not, I love this rose. It has beautiful small round leaved foliage similar to Stanwell Perpetual with canes that are brownish red with lots of little fuzzy thorns. The single yellow blooms go on forever. In my climate it blooms for a very long time. This rose looks good with and without blooms. It is an arching grower; very elegant.

I didn't see Duplex/Wooley Dod's Rose on your list. I love this rose. I feel like even after bloom the shrub is so attractive. Ofcourse all these roses are huge. Wooley Dod's is. I've planted many that are on your list. Most of them are young so all I can say is that they are vigorous. Another beauty is Schoener's Nutkana. This is a hybrid, a species crossed with (I think) a floribunda. It has huge single red blooms and beautiful foliage.

r. virginiana "plena" is listed twice so that narrows the list to 30 from 31. Nitida is a small rose. Perhaps drop one of the foetidas, because you have harisoni, a foetida hybrid.

Persian Yellow is mustard yellow and much stinkier than Harison's Yellow. I think it makes a bigger bush. All foetidas make suckers immediately so plant them where you can mow around them. Austrian copper is short and a wiry bush, not lovely except in bloom.
Those hips on Madame Hardy that you were interested in never turned color, just brown, shrunken. I'm going to chop them up looking for a seed but I doubt there are any.

I would drop the foetidas (they reek and are blackspot lepers) and I would add Rosa rugosa 'alba.'

Robert,
Maybe you should go with the least popular species roses, just to keep them circulating. A lot of people grow the rugosas, moschata, virginia, cherokee, canina, and New Mexico is covered in foetida and harrison's.

Thanks for all the input. I will keep you up to date on the progress of this project.

Robert

R. nitida is a colonizer, however it may not like your climate. It's a northern rose. R. carolina is a fairly nondescript pink thing, with a very short bloom period.

Here R. primula blooms before R. hugonis and is equally as nice. Harison's Yellow is much less nice. Unless double flowers really move you, or you have to have all of the early yellows, I'd give this one a pass. I'd also pass on the species foetidas unless you have a strong inclination to try things for yourself. Foetidas in general are things that show up dead in public gardens.

Robert, one you don't mention is R. arkansana.
It's a small plant, and not a terribly aggressive spreader.
The bloom color changes greatly, from one area to another, and the one we
have is striped, streaked, and stippled pink and white.
It puts on some spectacular hips, and goes dead dormant in the winter,
even here.
Fascinating little rose.

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Jeri

I grow r. pomifera for its very large decorative hips. The flowers are small and insignificant but this rose is so hardy and vigorous and the hips so magnificent that I consider it worth growing. The leaves are kind of downy, grayish-green and the flowers pink. The hips are the size of cherry tomatoes and hang down like Christmas ornaments! Here in New Hampshire the leaves turn yellow in the Fall.

Celeste

r. Pomifera (Apple Rose)....

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Robert, after what mad gallica says about nitida, i would agree, because the ones i had were small and finally died out, i thought it just might have been a fluke. R. pendulina finally died also, perhaps the same reason?? but r. woodsii, and r. acicularis aurora are doing well. goleden chersonase died a week after i planted it, but have another on order. r. hugonis is doing great under pretty poor conditions by the pond.
jeri, i always considered r. arkansana a very nondescript rose by the pictures i have seen, but i think by your pictures it could surpasse a modern rose in popularity, that is just beautiful, i've gotta get one, or a few.
doncasterii is a nice rose, reddish canes. corylus is a nitida-rugosa hybrid that is good for hips and fall color.
r.wichurana is a very aggressive grower, puts out long, flexible canes that you could shape to spell words, the electric truck ran over mine last year, they were young, and the tires stuck the broken canes in the soil where they rerooted and growing crazy this year. I have a wild prairie rose here that don't seem to mind wet feet as it is growing by the pond where the water drains into it. But moyesii died, i don't think it likes much moisture at all.
species roses seem pretty temperamental to me, they either grow very well under the extremes or they don't want to grow at all if they don't like your conditions.

Len, contact me off-list.
As far as I can see, every group of R. arkansana is different from every
other group of it, and I think this'n may be unique.

It was collected in a dry alkali lake it Utah, by a lady named Candy Craig,
and propagated by Kim Rupert -- which is why we call it "Peppermint Candy."
It is in the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, and I think it will soon be
in the Sacramento City Cemetery.

Jeri

I think you should plant them all. Different roses are going to grow differently wherever they are planted. Whether it is front yard vs backyard or half way across the country. I think you will find some flourish and some do not. Here where I live you cannot find a better rose than Harrison yellow, It likes everything about this area and does extremely well while I bet half of your list would be dead within a year if planted here.

Jeri, that r. arkansana looks fantastic.
It looks like Basye's Blueberry, but with more interesting foliage.

Randy

What Baseye's Blueberry has that R. arkansana does not have is remontancy.

:-(

I have read that it stops blooming when the weather gets hot (an obvious
survival tool, eh?
So I thought it might repeat here, where summers used to be quite cool.
But about the time we planted this little gem, the summers started
getting a lot hotter than they have historically.
So it is effectively not remontant.
Nice hips in the Fall, however.

:-)

Jeri

Just as a point of information....the rose in commerce as Hume's Blush is not. It is a fabulous rose, don't get me wrong, but not Hume's Blush.

I grow Duplex, R. californica, R. nutkana, Cantabridgensis, Schoener's Nutkana, 4 hybrid spinosissimas, including Harison's Yellow,, R. woodsii, R. gymnocarpa, R. canina, R. foliolosa, R. glauca, R. longicuspis, R. moschata, R. arvensis, R. laevigata, R. sericea f. pteracantha, R. clinophylla, R. soulieana, R. banksia 'Lila Banks' and others that don't come to mind right now, including innumerable hybrid multiflora volunteers. I highly recommend the species native to your part of the world or from similar climate zones. They will do well with little care. Others may be hit or miss, surprising you with their failures and successes.

On your list, the one I covet is R. macrophylla doncasterii.

You aren't mentioning the White Rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster for historical significance. They're great roses. I noticed Ayrshire Splendens on your list. I've been wanting that one myself. I grow rosa moyessi. Gawky canes, and it has never bloomed here. Rosa xanthina has lovely, ferny foliage and red canes.
Another idea might be Lord Penzance hybrids. Nasty, fascinating thorns and large hot pink flowers on Greenmantle. They're named after English characters. Rosa eglanteria keeps its green leaves late in the fall with thousands of orange hips.

You might want to have a look at the ratings in the American Rose Society Rose Buyer's Guide, if you can get ahold of one. At least one library here displays it (it's a horticultural library), I think they also have selected ratings up on the ARS web site.

Jeri did you get my email about r. arkansana "peppermint"?
I am still in disbelief that they named it after the arkansas river where they found it. I hope no one is deceived by thinking it is necessarily an r. arkansana hybrid.

Kaylah,

I've got those other roses listed according to their class (alba, gallica, eglantine, etc). I appreciate your endorsement for them.
All these comments have been very helpful. I appreciate you all so much.

Robert

R. sericea omeniensis, grows to be a small plant, here, only 4 feet tall, with a lot of wild charm. The blooms are darling, and the foliage is pretty, and the growth habit is distinctive, with very few side canes, and though this gives it an upright growth habit, it lacks the rigidity of overly hybridized rosebushes.
R. moschata is one of my 12 favorite wild roses,because
- of its' fragrance, which is especially strong on warm humid evenings, which can waft several feet away from the bush. Attractive foliage, too.
- a very long bloom season. R. moschata blooms from the first week of August through Halloween, non-stop, which I feel more than makes up for its' lack of remontancy.
R. helenae, is a bit thick limbed, and though I love all wild roses, I love this less than I think I ought to. It is a large spreading plant, with nice smooth foliage, and to my nose, very little fragrance. Few thorns.
R. primula, is very very fragrant. Striking red canes against primrose yellow blooms makes an attractive plant in spring.
Austrian Copper grows to be 7 feet, near San Francisco California, and nearly as wide.

Jeri, your photo of R. arkansana made my heart race, it is so lovely.

Luxrosa

R. glauca is divine, and probably better in your cooler climate than it would be here. I love the apple-scented foliage of r. eglanteria but have only seen it grown in cooler climes--big tall wavy tree-like rose, like some of the albas in habit. I'd think you'd want r. gallica officianalis, the Apothecary Rose aka Red Rose of York. As far as Ann and Olga's comments, "Me three", I agree. Room for one more? R. roxburghi plena.

Hey Len, no. I did not.
But note that this specific rose was NOT found at the Arkansas River. (Nor is R. arkansana confined to that area.)

The rose I posted was found in UTAH. In an alkali dry lake.

Jeri

jeri i got your email, i have difficulty sending emails with outlook express and comcast though.
I was just going by what i found on hmf in the comments section about R. arkansana "peppermint".
I appreciate your offering of cuttings, I would rather buy some rooted, as i do a lot of traveling in my job and fear i wouldn't have any success. whatever it is, i really think it is tops! I don't know if a name brand rose nursery would be interested in propagating them, but are there any individuals that you know of who are?

Coming in a bit late here, as often---

I don't think of 'Dupontii' as a species hybrid (I don't know whether anyone knows where it comes from) but it's a good handsome rose, sweetly scented, with grayish foliage.

Nobody has mentioned R. palustris as far as I can tell after skimming this post. I like this rose, which I believe is native to your part of the world: its willowlike foliage, red canes, and flowers are all handsome; it's thornless, or nearly so; it colors well in autumn, a great advantage here; and in spite of its name it handles drought and alkaline soil gracefully. It roots easily from cuttings, unlike many species roses. My plant is young; I don't know what a mature specimen looks like.

I like the foetida cultivars myself, including R. foetida bicolor, which is so exceptionally showy in its bloom period that I'm willing to give it garden room for the whole year on that strength. Black spot is no problem for me, so I can have these roses, but I'd be hesitant about them in an area where that's a problem. On their showing so far I'd say they like my sun, dry summers, and alkaline clay. The flowers of R. foetida are the brightest yellow there is, and the foliage is lettuce green.

I love the Musk Rose, though my plant is doing badly and may have to be replaced. I think it's suited to this area, but my grafted plant got off to a bad start and has sunk ever deeper in illness and distress. Or perhaps this is wishful thinking. At any rate, if your conditions suit it it's a lovely rose to have in the garden. It's very fragrant, and once it starts blooming in late summer it goes on until darkness and cold shut it down.

The Cherokee Rose is beautiful, I think, with a very oriental and exotic look to the flowers and foliage, the latter strongly reminiscent of that of camelias, which unfortunately I can't grow. This, and my failure to keep the Cherokee Rose alive and prosperous, may be why I long for this rose. If it's warm enough where you live it might do well for you. If R. anemoneflora is the R. laevigata hybrid 'Anemone', I believe it has a similarly exotic look to it, as does 'Anemone's color sport 'Ramona'.

The rugosas look fat and prosperous; they rebloom; they have round orange hips, also fat, as well as edible; they have a very good clove fragrance. They're thorny. I would plant rugosas if I thought they were good roses for my garden, which I don't, but am not heartbroken not to have them. When I dared call them fat on the Italian forum, various rugosa enthusiasts countered that they were beautifully exotic and oriental roses. In fact, this is true. They're great shrubs.

Perhaps because R. canina is so common here, I tend to take it for granted. It's attractive in flower, and would probably make a good shrub if pruned to shape it. The hips are oval, gleaming scarlet, and handsome: I use them in Christmas wreaths as we don't have holly. Some clones are definitely prettier than others.

I've only had 'Canary Bird' for a year, but it's been growing great guns. It has ferny foliage and good fall color, and I think I'm going to like it a lot.

R. rubrifolia (R. glauca) has very good foliage and is a handsome plant: I just got one myself.

R. roxburghii 'Plena' has fascinating foliage, bark, and hips (the flowers are nice, too) and I've seen it grown as an outstanding specimen rose.

These are the roses on your list, or not on it, that I've grown or know something about from direct experience. My growing conditions are different from yours, and I suspect that a lot of roses that grow well for me might suffer for you, and vice-versa. Then there are those that tolerate a wide range of conditions, like R. palustris.

I'm even later to comment. I don't grow many of the roses on your list but I have to defend Rosa helenae as very good rambler and a very well scented one. Admittedly, I don't know the pure species, only a couple of hybrids, Lykkefund and a found hybrid, not so originally called 'Hybrida'! Nobody grows the single R. cinnamomea (called R. majalis over here) but the double form is ubiquitous. HMF says it is "hardy to zone 6b and warmer" which must be the understatement of this century (and the last) as it is naturalized far above the Polar Circle.

Marianne in Sweden

If R. anemoneflora is the R. laevigata hybrid 'Anemone', I believe it has a similarly exotic look to it, as does 'Anemone's color sport 'Ramona'.

*** There are some very old plants of 'Ramona' at Rancho Camulos, a historic site here.
This Rancho was the model for the "Home" of the fictional character, Ramona, for which the rose is named.
And the owners made great use of the name, in things like their citrus labels.
These old plants are slowly fading away now, and more and more of them are reverting to rootstock -- in this case, IXL.
I'd love to see them replant that row of 'Ramona.'

Jeri