If it's not Laxa, then it might be a scentless multiflora which likes limey soil.... If it ain't a multiflora then it must be the rose DA sent to torment me... Rosa tormentosa var. 'Nik'.. One thing I know, it's growing like it's on steroids..

I'm going to throw out a crazy thought here: in 1927, there was a light-pink Polyantha released by De Ruiter. Yes, it was named 'Magnifica'.

Not much of a description at HMF, and no photos, but De Ruiter is still in business, and it is possible that they might have some sort of archives?

Stranger things have happened,

Virginia

O.K. If we are down to crazy thoughts...., yesterday, looking through Phillips/Rix's 'Roses' I noticed that R.Brunonii had somewhat similar clusters of flowers and when I checked Brunonii on HMF, among other entries, it said that Lens had bred Llx8960 from R. Brunonii x R. Multiflora var. Adenochaeta (Japanese native) in 1996. Some description but no photos. Louis Rambler was another result of this breeding, but, from what I can tell from photos, it is white/ cream. I remembered that Campanula had mentioned Lens, so wondered if an offspring of this cross might have become rootstock. Told you it was crazy! :-0

Thought of the day. Could this be some hybrid multiflora rambler?

Some more pics of the mystery rose. Excuse my visitor's car parked outside the chainlink fence, not a very nice background.. Any new guesses? You can see the new octapus arms developing very nicely, thank you.

Btw some other young ones nearby. Last blooms of the Ispahan flush

The young Cornelia and the mystery rose in the background

First year flowering New Dawn already trying to claim the cypress tree.

The same New Dawn

Camps, guess the rose from the hips... Clues: they are huge and so are the leaves, the flush is long gone already

I will just mention that David Austin sells 'Francis E Lester' at their U.K. site...

Your rose doesn't seem to spend much time with the pink-petalled and yellow-stamened look, but I think I see a few rose flowers in your photos that do have yellow stamens?

Yes, younger flowers are rosier with yellow stamens turning to whiter with grey-brown stamens quite quickly. Let me check that rose.... Looks similar but I can't see those pink stained white flowers on my rose. My rose turns from uniform blush pink to whiteish.

..just to say that although the flower sprays do look similar, 'Frances E. Lester' can be distinguished by its foliage which is red edged... I can't see that on your rose...

Marlorena, is the red edging on new growth only, or on mature leaves also? Looking at HMF photos, I definitely see the red edges on new growth (beautiful!), but not on the darker leaves.

I couldn't see new growth on the mystery rose clearly, so don't know about that...

Virginia

nikthegreek, I hesitated about suggesting 'FEL', because your rose doesn't seem to spend much time looking pink, but I don't know if that could be down to climate, or if it's just a wrong ID.

It's unlikely that I'd have thought of it if I hadn't noticed it on the DA web site with the ramblers.

Virginia

Leaves don't look similar from what I can tell from the unclear pics on HMF. I'll check for the new growth colour tomorrow but there's some red apparent in the pics above. But isn't this very common in roses? No red on mature leaves though, they're a dullish green. Temps and climate and cultivation conditions, in my experience, could affect flower colour but I don't think it would produce these pink edge stain effect I see in many pics on HMF but not on my rose. Btw pink is mostly evident on the underside of the petals, less on the upper side of the young blooms.

Have we excluded Laxa and multiflora rootstocks by now?

..on all the leaves Virginia, young and old... the foliage is serrated and edged with red.. or maroon colour.... on the plant above the foliage doesn't look right to me.... although I suppose it could be variable...I grew FEL in my last garden.... the flowers don't look quite the same either from how I remember it.... but it's a good call though...

I would never have thought it would be so tough to id a rose obtained from DA!!!! I somehow thought I would post a pic here and in 5 min someone of you guys would have id'ed the rose beyond reasonable doubt..

Nik, I have an idea... why not email DA with the photos and ask them to ID it.... you'll probably get a reply back within 24 hours... and it will assuage us all...

That would take all the fun out of this, wouldn't it?

Well I, for one, am not dismissing the possibility of any of those gi-normous ramblers of the Cedric Morris, Bobby James (or even Pleine de Grace) type since I do grow some of them and they take a good couple of years to take off and flower in huge panicles. The question for me would simply be which one?
Yep, dismissing rootstock - I know none of mine put out such clusters of flowers.

Well I did email DA about this today and I got a polite reply within a couple of hours offering their apologies, a replacement for this fall and a promise that they would come back to me 'as soon as we can positively identify the rogue'. I have no complaints about their customer service but should I hold my breath with regards to them being able to identify the rose? Do THEY keep a mother plant of all the roses they're growing and do THEY grow all the roses they're selling?

..well, it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about it... and I'm pleased they are offering a replacement, as they should of course.... I have found previously they respond quite quickly to queries.... we await with several bated breaths...

I was just sent a polite email by a person in DA UK, Manager in Landscapers, Designers and Amenity Services Department, who very tentatively expressed the opinion that it might be FEL, which would match with Virginia's opinion. I guess it might be this although I'm not convinced judging from FEL pics in HMF. I suppose we will never know for sure..

..it's good that they got back to you with that... there is a garden near me, which I shall visit Saturday, that has a large FEL growing on a wall.... I shall take a photo and then you can compare with yours...

Ho Nik, those heps are going to get larger - much larger - the size of mirabelle plums, assuming they are the gorgeous Madame Gregoire S.

Right on Camps!

..here are some photos of the foliage of 'Francis E. Lester' growing in a garden near me... flowers are not out yet, but I will be going back in a couple of weeks or so, when I expect they will be...

If those leaves with the red border are not very new then they surely don't look like mine's. If on the other hand mine is FEL or something similar, it surely needs to be moved from where it is. I was expecting a large shrub not a rambler in that spot.

I'll admit, I haven't read through all the above posts, so maybe this suggestion is way off from the descriptions, but it really reminds me of Ballerina.

Ah, I am in agreement with Marlorena that the foliage of FEL is quite distinct (and nothing like the matte leafage of either Laxa rootstock (although there is no way this rose is rootstock)...nor is it Ballerina either (which also tends to have quite glossy leaves) but I agree, I thought of the many Lens roses which used Ballerina in the lineage. That almost glaucous foliage is very distinctive and is found in few roses - R.villosa/pomifera, fedschenkoana, and some of the albas. Not Pleine de Grace either, you might be pleased to note...but I am not dismissing another rambler...Kew Rambler, for instance also has matte foliage.

Wildly guessing now.

Coming back to this thread, I need to report that this still unnamed rose, which is obviously a very vigorous (probably multiflora gened) rambler has exhibited rambling and grabbing tendencies (of course..) which I'm afraid makes it unsuitable for the large shrub space I had allocated to it .It has thrown these 6-8 feet long thin tentacles which move in the wind grabing anything that dares to go near it. Plus it has grabbed a nearby Cornelia and a nearby Mme. Gregoire Staechelin. It has doubled in size during the summer and It's proving to be a nuisance.

I'm considering either moving it to a spot near the edge of the property when it can ramble on and compete with (no idea if it will manage to) some hugely overgrown pistacia lentiscus shrubs and also perform guard duties against intruders by rambling on the chainlink fence or shovel prune it and be done with it (which I hate to do to a healthy - but somewhat unexciting - rose).

Do you think it can be moved after 2 years in the ground? Will it re-grow if I prune it short so I will be able to move it? As it is most probably grafted (if not a rootstock itself) how large would it's rootball be already? Maybe wait and move it as a bare root come winter?

Is pruning an option to make it form a large shrub (say 6 feet across) by branching rather than let it ramble about? How would I go about doing that?

I have very little experience with true ramblers so any help appreciated.

..as it's been in the ground only 2 years, this wouldn't worry me at all about moving it, during the winter.... I would cut it down to about a foot high, then dig.... you won't get a root ball and presumably it's grafted, so you will have to chop through the thicker wandering roots but you should get plenty of roots up with it, after some vigorous manoeuvering...

...not long ago I moved an 8 foot Blush Noisette that was in the ground over 4 years.... it's doing fine now...took a year or so to take off again though.. it's a shock....

...as it's a once bloomer, I would just prune immediately after flowering is over... once you've got the framework established again, to whatever height and width you are happy with, then just cut back all the laterals to the main branches and shorten any height/widths if it's getting too big again....once you get to know your rose, you can judge what kind of growth it's likely to make for the rest of the season...

However, Nik, if it's really not your type of rose, and we don't know exactly the variety name, I might question whether I'd want to keep that... I like to know my roses, and they need to impress me... there are so many others we can choose....

Oh! I have so many roses in pots waiting to be planted. Many more are arriving this fall. It takes so much energy, and expense, to do all that, so moving a planted rose seems like many steps backwards..

Nik, I once moved a 3 y.o Veilchenblau in autumn, after cutting it back as Marlorena described. It grew like mad, the following Spring and has never looked back. I remove the oldest canes each year after it flowers and trim new canes to keep it in check on the fence line. Sometimes those steps backward prove worthwhile :-) I know how overwhelming the addition of another chore to an already busy schedule can seem, especially when there may be other concerns, but I think your mystery rose has a lot of charm and deserves a place more suited to it in your garden. Much nicer than barbed wire to discourage intruders!

Melodye

Just to report that I have just received my replacement from DA. I hope that this is the real sweat briar R. rubiginosa 'Magnifica' this time but I won't know for sure until it blooms. That won't happen until spring 2017 I'm afraid... In the meantime the noid rambler just keeps growing and growing... I will leave it at this spot until it blooms again this spring and then I will hack it down and attempt to move it to somewhere it may be freely able to do its thing (i.e. grow and grab animate and inanimate objects in its vicinity..). At the spot it is now I expect it will soon be covered by pieces of human skin and clothing... plus canine fur.. no good.

PS. btw, the noid rose has small orange hips on it now, which I will post a
pic of tomorrow in a last attempt towards identification (or at least,
pinpointing its class).

No-id rambler hips. Do they ring a bell to anyone? These are about half an inch across or smaller.

Bumping..... Anybody in the know took a look at these hips?

If the grower is using any open-pollinated seedlings for root-stock and you were sent one of those by mistake then this plant doesn't have a name. Otherwise, quickly scrolling through the thread I didn't seen anybody mention that any and all musk roses still having the floral morphology of the wild parental species (or being one of those itself) will have a fused stylus in the center of the flower - hence Sec. Synstylae.

Not sure about the style in this case (can't tell from your pictures) but otherwise I agree your plant looks like a musk rose. And I am sure it is not any of the more familiar roses that have been brought up such as R. canina, 'Dupontii' etc.

By the way I know 'Magnifica' from the collections of the Seattle Botanic Garden and it is a carefree plant with a showy blooming effect. (Since it is of hybrid origin it should be called R. 'Magnifica' and not R. rubiginosa 'Magnifica'.)

..your photo with the hips looks just like my 'Francis E. Lester' when I had it, identical in shape and arrangement.... it's a pity the leaf edges are lacking the maroon colour but according to G.S.Thomas, they are ''usually'' edged, which implies... not always...

...I now think it's the best guess...

I've known that one for years, am not convinced it is a match. Not yet anyway. There are thousands of kinds of just named roses alone, with many looking generally similar but still not in fact being the same exact introductions.

Embothrium,

As I understand it, stock usually used in the UK is the 'Laxa' canina cultivar produced from seed in mass production facilities outside the UK. My rose does not look very canina-ish to me. In any case, this rose is budded onto stock as far as I have managed to see.

Francis E. Lester seems to be getting the most votes, including the one from the DA person, so I will go with it for now although I too have my doubts judging from pics. If it is related to that rose then that would make it a sort of Hybrid Musk rather than a moschata hybrid which might explain the apparent lack of stong scent. We will have to go with something DA actually sell in the UK as, although not impossible, it is improbable that this rose, if not of accidental origin, is a named variety that they do not sell.

It does look like a very vigorous and healthy rose with no touch of disease or chlorosis. The only thing it has been suffering from, along with many of my roses, has been chewing of fresh cane tips by insect larvae. It was planted bare rooted in a large amended hole btw..

Regarding your comment about Magnifica, are you sure you are not refering to the hybrid rugosa that goes by the same name? I'm not sure what the subject 'Magnifica' really is, all I could find is the is supposedly a seedling of Lucy Ashton, a rose which is considered a rubiginosa (sweat briar).

Btw, I'm sure that proper botanic naming has been more than abused for centuries in the case of roses but this is a fact that we should accept and not sweat about it. It has been the nature of the rose (its variability within species) and its history of cultivation that is confusing things. Unless one does genetic comparisons one can never be sure if a particular rose is a species cultivar or a hybrid, as far as I understand it, so proper formation of its botanic name is a moot point.
Rugosa
Rubiginosa

Marlorena,

If it is indeed FEL do you think that it would be amenable to be trained on some tripod or pyramid structure I could readily construct out of six foot bamboo canes which I just happen to have lying around? Tie it around all the way up and then let it 'shower' from there? If I don't move it, I will have to do something about its carnivorous habit..

As I remember it 'Lester' produces a more clearly bi-colored flower, with a darker pink zone, and differs in other ways. I would want to compare the plant in question with live material of a known 'Lester' before being satisfied they were the same.

Clinging to any particular known variety without fully conclusive evidence like matching live specimens could easily be a mistake.

Yes, but I'm not going to market the rose, nor write a book about it.. OK, I promise I'm not going to post pics on HMF arguing that it's FEL, so everyone should feel very safe..

Nik.... I think if you leave it where it is, as a freestanding shrub, you are going to have to support its canes with something, I don't know what... I wouldn't want to grow it that way, if it is FEL, and let's assume it is for now... my plant was grown on a partition fence within my garden, not on a boundary, and it grew to about 10-12 feet width before I moved on... it develops thick strong canes, thorny too, and made a heavy plant... at one time I thought it would bring the fence down, so I had to reinforce it...think of it as a mini Kiftsgate... and as you can see from my photos earlier, it's growing on a wall in that garden - best place for it... I was disappointed in that I couldn't detect a great scent either, as I had been led to believe it possessed...

...looking at your rose again, its habit does remind me of it too, canes flying out everywhere, rambler type... they need tying in...

..best of luck with your 6 foot cane approach, but rather you than me...

Yes, it has the look of a rambler only with thicker canes. I could try moving it this winter but I will hate loosing its flush.. Plus its a late bloomer (is this your experience also?) which means that in my climate it blooms in June rather than May. Would that mean July for you? Too hot for moving a rose later than that.. And I have just the spot for him.. Decisions.. DA are to blame for all this..

..yes Nik, I can confirm it bloomed later for me, from the end of June, not before....

...if mine, I would try and keep all the canes in the process of moving it, if you have to, so I don't miss a flush, and maybe prune it back next summer, after flowering in its new position.... I've done that before without much dieback.... of course you have tricky soil....

....I'm also getting familiar with Austin's occasional mistakes....

...actually, I didn't post this image of FEL before, I meant to do so.. but this was taken on June 16 so just coming into bloom.... a bit earlier than I thought but we had some heat... I must say, the individual blooms look a little larger than yours, more pink and prominent yellow stamens.... but the maroon edging to the foliage is less marked now...

...not easy is it?...

Difference in colour may be attributed to differences in climatic conditions and UV... or not... Size does indeed appear to be somewhat larger judging from the relationship to the leaflets.

Preceding photos illustrate what I mentioned, it continues to appear your plant is structurally different as well as being colored differently - and is not 'Francis E Lester'. I have known that one for years, currently have it growing over an Italian plum in my girlfriend's garden - and would never have suggested it for your plant.

So, a couple of posts ago you suggested live comparison with a known plant, but now you are sure. Any HELPFUL suggestions about what it might be, rather than what it isn't apart from the, highly improbable due to the conditions under which it was acquired, suggestion that it might be a no-name? Thanks.

Any HELPFUL suggestions about what it might be, rather than what it
isn't apart from the, highly improbable due to the conditions under
which it was acquired, suggestion that it might be a no-name? Thanks

I guess it's consistent for rose enthusiasts to be prickly.

Well it's true about me especially when I encounter people with an attitude, I don't know about the others. Contrary to you I don't tend to overgeneralize. But you seem to know best, plus us 'rose nuts' are 'resistant to new information'. So what are you doing here then?
Callery Pear