Bloomfield Abundance

9 years ago

Kim, I noticed on another thread that you have a plant of what is thought to be the actual 'Bloomfield Abundance'. That is so exciting! Please post pics of it next Spring.

I looked on HMF, and they did indeed have the accurate information (if you are willing to believe DNA evidence) that what turned out to be spray Cecile Bruner was mis- identified as BA for decades (or longer!). Whether or not the rose Fred Boutin found is the real BA or not, we know that the rose sold forever as BA is really just a sport of Cecile Bruner. The older pics on HMF, of course, are of Cecile Bruner, but there are some nice pics of the possibly real BA in the first pages.

I just love this mystery! I also have noticed that Austin's web site still insists that the spray CB they are selling is really the true BA. This puzzles me, to say the least. I read somewhere a very annoyed, very defensive statement by one of the really prominent English rose people (I can't remember which one) that he remembered his father growing BA (the rose we now know is a CB) when he was a child, so it could NOT have been mis-identified for all of that time..... So sad. I totally believe his story, but what it tells me is that the mix up between the real BA (which was bred in the US) and spray CB happened a LONG time ago. So, was the wrong rose shipped to England in the first place? Did they somehow get mixed up during or right after the original shipment? These are the mysteries I love to think about - just for fun.

So happy we have a candidate for the real BA, and I hope to get one for my garden sometime (I already have all three CBs, after all, and I am definitely a "collector").

Jackie

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Comments (6)

roseseek
9 years ago
Hi Jackie, thank you! Well, first, I have six buds of BA inserted into Pink Clouds which are green and swelling after more than a month, so they should be safely able to be considered "takes". It will likely be spring before they produce enough growth to do anything with. I don't know if they will flower then or not as I don't know how mature they must be before flowering. My hope is to be able to generate more wood for propagation. Once there are blooms, you can be sure they will be posted to Help Me Find.

There really isn't any way to know for sure how they were confused or when. I guess, if you squint really hard and really want to believe, Spray Cecile Brunner might be able to be confused with the single, nearly century old photograph of Bloomfield Abundance. This one is particularly satisfying for me. I have maintained for more than thirty years that what has been sold as BA is definitely a mutation of Cecile Brunner. There is absolutely no way the stated parents for Bloomfield Abundance could result in a definite Tea-poly result. We've seen more than hundred years of Wichurana breeding and none of it has resembled anything approaching Cecile Brunner's foliage or wood.

This Bloomfield Abundance does resemble some of the results The Brownells obtained in their decades of work breeding "HT's" using Wichurana to create their "Sub Zero" roses. If you look at Flower Carpet and the Kordes results from their breeding with The Fairy, that should also give you an indication of what you should expect the results to look like.

The report that BA had been grown in the family for a generation could have easily come from someone giving them the plant and remembering its identity incorrectly, or someone being sent out to collect wood from it and selecting the wrong plant to cut from. The former is common in commerce as well as in "pass along" situations. The latter is also common. Probably the most famous example was when Huey was mistakenly collected as Ragged Robin, resulting in Huey becoming the standard stock in US commercial production. Or, it could simply be the situation of, "Gee, that looks like Bloomfield Abundance", so it became BA. However it occurred, I agree with you that it is exciting to finally have a potential candidate for being the REAL one! I'll keep you posted how these develop. Happy Thanksgiving! Kim
jerijen
9 years ago
Jackie -- Roses went back and forth "across the pond" in greater numbers than you might think. The business that became ROY&T sent many roses there, in the 1950's, and they probably went even earlier.

That's why there is Rose Mosaic Virus in England. And I know of at least one case in which a plant brought FROM AUSTIN to be used as a mother plant in the U.S. arrived with a whacking case of RMV. That company tested their mother plant, after I reported the problem to them, and they acknowledged to me, privately, that yes, their mother plant was virused.

So -- mis-named roses must just as easily have been exchanged. Doesn't surprise me in the least.

And, FWIW, there is a possibility that the re-discovered 'Bloomfield Abundance' may be available at the Cemetery's April 18 sale -- though it is too early to be certain of that.

Jeri
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Comments (1)
Working on the Auction catalog, I tracked down a couple of the contemporary photos of 'Bloomfield Abundance.' It's hard to look at those, and imagine how that Hybrid Tea could have become confused with Spray Cecile Brunner. I'm really looking forward to seeing this rose, and hopefully getting photos of it for future reference. We grow a couple of Thomas roses -- 'Bishop Darlington' which is a GREAT rose, here at the SoCal coast -- and 'Bloomfield Courage,' which was collected at the home where the Breen family lived, after their Donner Party ordeal. I can see why Capt. Thomas' roses were so highly regarded in his day. Jeri
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It's unfortunate when statements like Mr. Griffith's about "my plants are totally different", aren't accompanied with HOW they differ. When comparing bush Cecile Brunner to Spray, there is no doubt they are OF the same rose, but they are also TOTALLY different. They share the same components, but Spray's are significantly larger in my climate. The whole plant is vastly more vigorous, faster growing and achieves much larger proportions, much faster. It is, to my eye, an intermediate mutation on the way to a full climbing form. It's easily twice the size of the bush, about half that of the full climber, which makes complete sense to me. I don't view mutations as an "on" or "off" proposition, but more of a continuum. As I discussed in my "Poor Old Iceberg" article on HMF (see below), it is common to find bushes of both of these varieties which grow to vastly differing proportions. We commonly see Iceberg here which are happy to remain at the four by four foot range, while others are twice that size, yet are not considered "climbing". It's the same with Cecile. Some are easily maintained as smaller polys with very little pruning, while others easily build to six and eight foot shrubs, yet don't throw the amazing sprays the Spray form does. There is no doubt the breeding of Bloomfield Abundance could never produce the foliage, wood and plant type resulting from Cecile Brunner's lineage. Anything which demonstrates her characteristics are obviously of her breeding and could NEVER be Bloomfield Abundance. I'm thrilled Fred appears to have solved this puzzle, unraveling the mystery. If anyone could, it is Fred! Thanks, sir! Kim Here is a link that might be useful: Poor Old Iceberg
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Even without dna, I could well believe that the rose in commerce as Bloomfield here in the uk, is actually a Cecile variant - I took a picture last year of a 'Bloomfield' doing that classic Cecile thing where it proliferates to the extent that there's a whole new bud growing out of the middle of the first one. That found rose certainly is a darling looker, even without the name.
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If I recall correctly, it was Mr. Beales who stated since his family had grown Spray Cecile Brunner for two generations, it MUST be the correct B.A. Remember, also, he was the gentleman who identified Pink Gruss an Aachen as Irene Watts, and when presented with the proof that they were the same rose, he maintained he HAD and SOLD the correct one, but never supplied photos of the right one in all the years he had the opportunity to demonstrate he was correct. He was also the gentleman who distributed Barcelona as Francis Dubreuil, though that ID was likely Sangerhausen's fault. The confusion about B.A. was more difficult to uncover because until photos of Fred's rediscovery, there were only three photos of the real B.A. (though, you could argue there were only TWO, as one was a simply a colorized copy of one of them) and none of them had been printed since 1926. The latest place these were shown is Help Me Find, where I would link them, if it was working properly. Since that is only showing green screens until whatever the issue is can be found, I've "borrowed" them for here. This was printed in the 1920 American Rose Annual. This image was printed in the American Rose Annual, 1926. And, this was printed in The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing (1920), by Captain George C. Thomas, Jr. who created the rose, and is simply a black and white print of the colorized print above. The breeding provided would never produce a plant so obviously multiflora-based, but as few had access to these images, who could see the error? Anyone with any knowledge of rose classes and of an inquisitive mind, questioned how a hybrid Wichurana and a Hybrid Tea resulted in a multiflora type poly, just as those same minds questioned how anyone could possibly consider the obviously Wichurana-based "Sombreuil" a "Tea".
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jacqueline9CA
Original Author
9 years ago
Thank you both. I hope the real BA is offered for sale at the Cemetery - that would be wonderful!

Jackie
malcolm_manners
9 years ago
We have several plants of the tentative true BA in FSC's new garden, and we've propagated a number of them. Rose Petals Nursery is also growing it. It's a nice rose.
Malcolm
roseseek
9 years ago
That would make another really interesting DNA project, Malcolm. See if it is possible to determine the level of Wichurana involvement and if it seems to have occurred when and where the stated BA parentage indicates. Kim
jerijen
9 years ago
It surely is a beautiful thing. And I was interested to see how the habit of the young plant in the Cemetery echoed the rather young plant in the historic photos.

And the BLOOM is delicious.

Bloomfield Abundance

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