Do you have an old Peace Rose?

12 years ago

Does anyone have a Peace Rose bush known to be over 20 years old? The older, the better. I have tried to grow store bought ones with little success. The color is either not right or by the end of the season it looks like a completely different rose. I read in the book, "Right Rose Right Place" by Peter Schneider that because of overproduction the Peace Rose that is sold today is often not as good as when it was first introduced in 1946. (Due to mass demand, growers have not always selected the best cuttings to propagate, leading to the "watered down" version often found today.)

If you have such an old plant, I would be willing to trade or negotiate otherwise.

Thanks,

Gerry

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roseseek
12 years ago
Gerry, if you read the thread on the Roses forum titled, Which Nursery is Best for Virus Free Roses?, you will find Dr. Malcolm Manners discussing how Peace grows significantly more vigorously and flowers much better after being heat treated to clean up viral infection, I think it will drive home the point that what you really need to do is obtain cutting from UC Davis Foundation Plant Services of VI treated Peace. They offer cuttings of it and many other varieties of roses which have all been heat treated and tested to make sure they are cleaned of Mosaic Virus.

Peace was created around 1935, making it nearly 80 years old. Even if you found cuttings from a twenty year old plant, you're still dealing with material that it not all that old and wouldn't be that different from what you've encountered in nurseries.

Dr. Manners also discusses the "over propagation" issue and debunks it. The large problem with Peace is its need to hold on to as much wood and foliage as possible to perform at its best. Too often, bud wood or the bare roots themselves are held in too dry storage, something roses of strong R. Foetida heritage do not like. Mauve roses, such as Angel Face and Sterling Silver suffer the same issues as you describe from your Peace plants, and often for the same reasons.

My suggestion for success is to obtain the treated material from Davis, root your plants then begin preventing them from flowering until they have developed into the plants you desire. Peace, like many others, can be extremely variable due to many factors, weather and nutrients to name just two. Too cold and they tend to be nearly white. Too hot and they develop too much pink on the petal edges with the yellow fading out to beige. Insufficient wood and foliage and they are malnourished, not performing well at all. By preventing them from flowering, you will push more growth, faster, enabling the plant to build into the husky, heavy plant you expect it to be. The more retained wood, the greater the foliage mass, the more, larger, fuller and more intensely colored the flowers will be. It isn't difficult at all, just keep removing the flower buds as they develop, leaving all the leaves on the plants.

If you obtain the cleaned cuttings and root several plants, you will have enough to let them bloom for you while those you are grooming to become the garden plants you seek mature. I'm sure finding homes for VI own root Peace plants won't be hard at all.

The link below is to the variety list on the Foundation Plant Services site. You will probably find many more varieties you'd love adding to your garden. Consider it, this can well be the success you're seeking. Good luck! Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Foundation Plant Services plant list
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I also have a very old Peace rose. From where it was planted (alongside of the driveway, in a long row of various bush HTs planted, we think, in the late 1940s or early 1950s), I can only surmise that the original was the bush form. However, a gigantic pomegranite bush has arisen just behind it, and by the time I first saw the Peace rose it was definitely climbing. The bottom is in full shade from the bush. I hired a gardener once who unfortunately pruned it as a normal bush HT growing in full sun. Disaster. It put out tons of new growth, which immediately became covered in rust. I left it alone for a few years, and it started to climb again. I helped it up into the canopy of the pomegranite, and now the canes don't bloom until they get way up there into the sunlight (10-12 feet up). Then they produce the most amazingly huge (7-8 inches across) blooms. Luckily our bedroom window on the second floor faces exactly at this rose, so we can enjoy its beautiful bloom. Not much disease at all, except for this Spring when it has rained and rained and is still raining... I am glad I read this thread - I didn't realize that Peace had deteriorated in commerce over the years - I will definitely root some cuttings of this old one. Thanks for the info! Jackie
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This thread makes me smile. Jackie, I love the fact that you are living and gardening in a place that holds so much history for your family. I have an own-root Peace in my garden, a virus-indexed plant that got from Vintage in 2008. It was originally planted in my Rose Field among similar HTs. Life happened, my Rose Field grew over with weeds and invasives and I didn't have what it took to keep it up at the time, and Peace seemed to be lost. Last spring, I waded through that section of the garden and discovered that Peace was still there ... small and scrawny, but very much alive. I carefully dug it up, and it is now planted in my front yard HT garden, with other own-root HTs, where it receives much better care and it is thriving. These HTs seem to need more in the way of nutrition, so it gets fed regularly. I do my best to be as good as I can about keeping to my twice-monthly fungicide schedule, too. In return for my care and attention, Peace is growing and doing very, very nicely ... producing the large, bright green foliage that I think of when I imagine Peace. My goal for this plant is to keep it healthy and vigorous and to bud a copy of it onto rootstock to see what a virus-free Peace can do when grown as it was originally intended to be. When the plant gets bigger (it's about a foot-and-a-half tall right now), I will propagate own-root plants and get them out of here into other homes who will also care for and preserve them. (The photo of Peace and her little bug friend was taken yesterday morning.)
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It does look something like a Peace rose, but it seems much too tall. Helpmefind.com lists the height of Peace as 4 to 6 ft. tall. And when I used to grow it here in Zone 6 (KS), it only got about 3 ft tall. I also hesitate because it has so many leaves on it--here at the end of the season. Peace is notorious for blackspotting badly, so unless someone has been spraying it all summer, that would seem to be far too many leaves. Even on the semi-close pic, I can't see any BS problems. My other reason for holding back on this identification is purely subjective--while the colors look very much like Peace colors, the blooms do not have the effect that Peace roses usually have on me. Like, a quick intake of breath and a slow expiration as I admire the colors--as in, it makes my soul sing. Which these blooms, lovely as they are, do not even remotely do to me. But it is a lovely rose and I sure wouldn't refuse it if you wanted to dig it up and plant it in my yard. : ) Kate
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Do you have an old Peace Rose?

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roseseek

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