This question of whether 'Blush Hip' is actually 'Blush Damask' interests me. I've had 'Blush Hip' in a difficult corner of the garden for several years, and it never looked particularly like an Alba to me, but I knew that some roses classed as Albas don't conform to the basic model ('Queen of Denmark', 'Belle Amour'). My plant came from Schultheis in Germany. It's a thorny plant with glands on the buds, floppy. I can't judge how much it would sucker as it's only just getting off its rootstock. It looks more like a Damask than like an Alba at any rate. I don't have an official plant of 'Blush Damask' in the garden to compare it with, and it's been a decade since I saw 'Blush Hip' at Roseto Carla Fineschi. I took a look at the photos of 'Blush Hip' on HMF. The rose in the photos just posted by Menja show decidedly Alba-like foliage, while Altora's photos show a different rose that looks like it could be a Damask. Then I went to look at HMF photos of 'Blush Hip', and couldn't say whether this is my rose. Confusion all over, in other words. Marianne, would you care to add to your previous comment about the ID of this rose? Melissa

Thanks, Kathy, for adding to the conversation about this. She actually tells a story about "Prince Charlie's Rose" which was told her as recounted through the records of Edrom Nurseries by Alex Duguid. I'll just quote: After the battle of Prestonpans in 1745, where Charles Stuart defeated the Government troops ... on the evening of that day a reception was held in the ballroom of Holyrood Palace at which the prince (Charles Stuart or Bonnie Prince Charlie) wore on his coat a double white rose. On the morning after the prince had gone the chambermaid found the rose left on the dressing-table in the bedroom. She took it home to her mother, a keen gardener, who managed to root the rose spray. Eventually the resulting plant was planted in the gardens of Carberry Towers ... where it flourished... In 1926 when the Misses Logan-Home moved the Edrom Nurseries to Silverwells, near Coldingham, the rose was planted there and soon developed into a large bush, increasing itself by suckers. Again when I came to Ballater in 1979 I took a plant of this rose with me, where it is spreading and flowering freely. Approximately 3 feet high, it produces many small double white flowers every summer. She says then that she still has a plant of Prince Charlie's rose which was given to her by this man named Alex Duguid, who worked for many years with the Misses Logan-Home at Edrom Nurseries.

Eglantine has leaves that smell like green apples, especially when there's been a rain or a morning dew and the sun is evaporating those water droplets off the leaves, but it also is a rose bush that very much looks like "a briar". The bush's appearance is "rustic", and it also is a big rose. If it's happy the shrub will be at least 7' X 7', with canes and branches awkwardly growing this way & that. I think it's a wonderful rose for a hedgerow or the right landscape, if you have the room for it, but it's not at all "svelte". (Please also understand that I personally wish that I owned a plot of land where it made aesthetic sense to grow this rose! I LOVE THE IDEA OF LEAVES THAT SMELL LIKE GREEN APPLES!! Unfortunately, I don't live on or own such a piece of land. :( )

I am interested in what is the natural spread of rose viruses. In designing any experiment one normally calculates the number of samples required to obtain a result that has a 95% confidence level. I think the results of this type of calculation for rose virus spread are interesting. If the natural spread in a field is 1% a year and one checked the field at the end of one year, one would have to examine 2377 plants to be able to report the results as having a 95% confidence level (1.0 +/- 0.4)%. If the natural spread in a field is 4% a year, and one checked the field at the end of one year; one would have to examine 9220 plants to be able to report the results as having a 95% confidence level (4.0 +/- 0.4)%. To be able to report a (4 +/- 1)% spread, the number of plants should be 1475. To be able to report a (4 +/- 2)% spread number, one would need to examine 369 plants. To be able to report a (4 +/- 3)% spread number, one would need to examine 164 plants. The number of plants required for a quantitative study are probably larger than what most researchers would want to undertake. Another approach is a qualitative study to see if the spread is non zero. If designed correctly, positive results of such a study would have a definite meaning but negative results would not. An example of such a study appears to be the published paper by R. H. Converse and A. B. Bartlett, Plant Disease Reporter, volumn 63, pages 441-444, (1979). They studied 21 wild rose plants from 17 Oregon, U.S.A. locations. 5 plants out of the 20 that were tested by agar-gel diffusion (1 plant was not tested) were found to have tobacco streak virus. The positive testing plants came from 4 of the 17 sites (2 positive out of 2 tested from one site; 1 out of 1 tested from another site; 1 out of 3 from another; and 1 out of 1 from another). (The wild rose was not identified in the paper, I suspect that it was R. Setigera.) Here is a link that might be useful: Link to do your own calculations