Melissa wrote: "Climate in my garden is similar to Kim's but my care is different. I'm not nearly as nice to my roses in general.;) I water less, and feed differently I think. No chemical fertilizers at all." I think your "winter cold" is deeper than mine. (9b v. 10a, Sunset Zones probably between 18 and 19 for you, 20 to 21 for me) It seems your soil is quite a bit different in origin from what I've seen on line, being more of a deeper alluvium. Mine is the white shale layer of the Santa Monica Mountain formations. I water enough to keep plants alive, but not "thriving", particularly during the worst of the heat. I don't fertilize with anything other than prunings I shred and throw back on the soil surface as "mulch". I don't amend using anything, period. I avoid "organic" fertilizers due to the legions of moles, gophers, skunks, opossums, raccoons, coyotes, rabbits, rats, etc., all of which are either attracted by the organics themselves or to those which they attract. I don't need, nor wish to encounter any more "wildlife" that close to the house. Sometimes, it's a "witch" living this close to the "urban wilderness". I don't fertilize those in the ground with inorganic fertilizers, either. The soil is quite 'salty', as is the irrigation water. There has been no rain to flush the accumulated salts from the soil. Adding inorganics would only serve to intensify the "salts". I do use light, infrequent applications of inorganic fertilizer (always water soluble) to newly propagated, potted plants to replace the nitrogen they lose to watering. Being in an "extreme heat, extreme fire danger" area, I am allotted a relatively high level of "Tier 1" water use. I use, and have been using a quarter of that allotment, both to conserve the resource itself as well as to conserve the ever increasing cost of it. The areas I would normally irrigate show the reduced water consumption. I recently removed sixty feet of forty-plus year old escalonia hedge which had begun dying at one end and continued crisping and browning by the foot from the southern toward the northern end. Increasing the water to it had little positive effect, so eliminating the need, as I have done with all other plantings proving themselves "too needy", helps reduce the danger of combustion as well as need to increase the water bill. You might find this seedling of interest. Kim Here is a link that might be useful: Puzzlement

Nik, I do think it's too soon to tell much about such an immature plant; especially without any close-up photos of leaves, buds, thorns, etc. I did suggest 'Rose Edouard', but I meant that to be a starting place for exploration, certainly not as a definitive ID. I wondered if the rose 'Palmyre' might be called that because at one point that was a scion that didn't survive. 'Rose Edouard' and 'Céline' are two popular Bourbon rootstocks that often survived the roses grafted onto them, and early descriptions of 'RE' and 'Céline' both seem like good candidates. The HMF photos for both roses seem to me to not match up too well with the early references, but others may disagree. 'Céline', incidentally, was described early on as both a Hybrid Bourbon and a Hybrid China. I believe that William Paul started out calling her a Bourbon or Hybrid Bourbon, but then began calling her a Hybrid Chinese. Virginia

Belle Gallica, how do Austins do for you? Paul's 'Marianne' and 'Allegra' are listed as zones 6b-9b and 4b-10b...probably due to Austin parents? 'Marianne' is from 'Abe Darby' and 'Allegra' is from 'St.Swithin'. Also, 'Etienne' (4a and warmer) is from 'Chianti'. I know from experience that they rival the old classics and look every bit OGR/Gallica, although I'd say 'Marianne" looks like 'Gloire de Dijon' and 'Charles de Mills' had productive sex. I grew 'Etienne' but gave it away to dear friends who had never seen such decadent, beetroot blooms. The 'Allegra' growing in Paul's garden is speech-defyingly exquisite and my current obsession. I grow a young 'Marianne' since I kept purchasing her, growing her, digging her up and passing her along to people who fell in love. I'm RVR waitlisted again for the other two and WILL NOT dig up and gift my current 'Marianne.' I hope you have wonderful luck with 'Rosa Mundi'. She's lovely! Lindsey, maybe there should be a thread asking everyone to guesstimate the bloom period of their Gallicas, including Paul Barden's? I know, in general, his do bloom for quite a stretch in my garden, but I've never calculated how long, and mine are all rather young because I keep giving them away to friends or acquaintances that are both unfamiliar with them and bewitched by their old rose beauty. Since they are easy keepers here in Portland, I know they will flourish in their new homes unlike blackspot-on-a-stick HTs. I tell everyone that they are like camellias and rhododendrons. Who wouldn't grow a camellia just because it only blooms once a year? Sheila, love the Duchesse! Chris and Lindsey, I'll try to find a shot of my Indigo, too. I have one somewhere. To me, 'Indigo' looks and acts like a (moderately spreading) Gallica, smells like a Damask and repeats like a HP/Portland. It's very healthy here. No "damask crud" noted. How's its health for you, Chris? Carol

The Damask ancestry that included R. phoenicia was based on the writings of Hurst, who made his suppositions based on trying to tease apart features in Damasks and match them to other species. Until that genetic study came out a few years ago that indicated R. fedtschenkoana was a parent, it was never considered before. So I'd disregard the R. phoenicia bit. As to how it happened, I think it was Doug Seidel who wrote a piece about how R. gallica, R. moschata, and R. fedtschenkoana could have met up. Summarized..... R. moschata is not really a true species, but a particular clone of some species from the east that has been maintained in gardens for something like a thousand years. It and R. gallica -- especially something like 'Officinalis' or maybe 'Tuscany' or 'Conditorum' -- would have also been grown alongside R. moschata, since both were used in herbal "medicines" for a long time. The story Doug wrote mentioned something about some faction -- maybe church related -- that was either cast out or moved voluntarily from Europe to areas near Bulgaria or Turkey, and would have likely brought these roses with them, along with other plants, for their "physic gardens". In doing so, the earlier warm-up time would have allowed for R. moschata to start blooming with some overlap with R. gallica -- back in much of Europe, there would have been a gap between -- which could have resulted in R. gallica pollen hitting R. moschata, which generally doesn't set seed from its own pollen. Seeing hips on R. moschata, people may have thought that they could plant them as another way of getting more R. moschata -- not realizing that R. gallica was the daddy -- and the resulting hybrids would have been added to the list of things grown in those gardens. In that area, R. fedtschenkoana is native, and some bee could have carried pollen from outside the garden in. It all sounds improbable, but remember that the period of time would have been centuries, and the R. moschata X R. gallica hybrid could have had multiple generations of being raised by seed before being fertilized by R. fedtschenkoana. Even improbable things will eventually happen, given enough chances and time. R. moschata starts blooming after getting sufficient heat, then keeps going. In much of Europe, that meant starting in August. In warmer areas, it'd start earlier. R. fedtschenkoana has sprinkles of blooms on and off all season -- never really having a full flush at a time. It probably sets buds in response to water, responding to periodic rains that can come at any time during the growing season. 'Officinalis' is a cultivar, but was given a Latin name as was custom at the time. It doesn't breed true from seed, so it's neither a true species nor proper "form" botanically. Many old cultivars have Latin names that give the appearance of being species, but that's because after Linnaeus came up with a system of naming things, people used it for any little difference they found. Alba roses may have originated in Europe, or maybe closer to the Middle East where the Damasks happened. They might have been "weeds" that happened in the brush, when Damask pollen landed on native R. canina, or perhaps R. canina was used as a rootstock for Damasks, and a sucker bloomed and was fertilized by its Damask scion, and seed dropped in the garden. Rose traffic wasn't one-way, so that it was in the rose growing fields where we assume Damasks originated doesn't mean that Albas originated there as well, but it's possible. We do know that R. canina is pentaploid, and most Albas are hexaploid. Because of the way R. canina makes seed, R. canina was the mother and Damasks were the fathers. The R. sancta story is a bit muddled. Someone found rose remains in a tomb -- or art or wall painting or something -- and determined that it matched a rose called 'Rosa sanctae'. That's a very tenuous way to make a match. Later -- I can't remember which author wrote it -- 'R. sancta' as grown was found to be this R. gallica X R. arvensis hybrid that occurred in the wild, and even if what was in that old depiction was this same hybrid, it was almost certainly not the same individual clone of it. Since the hybrid occurred in the wild, many different clones of it are out there. And it could have also been something else entirely. R. foetida in the wild is a five-petaled rose. It had a sport known as 'Austrian Copper'. The third form is 'Persiana', which is a double form of the yellow. I think it originated in the Middle East, because when it made its way to Europe, it was heralded as the first double truly yellow rose that could easily be grown in gardens. The only other one was R. hemisphaerica, which often balled, and only had acceptable blooms when conditions were right. To my nose, it smells like R. fedtschenkoana -- which means (to me) like oil-based paint. That's not so "stinky" as just "surprisingly not what I'd expect from a rose." :-) ~Christopher