That was a wonderful and comprehensive reply, Marlorena. Given the horrible weather conditions you've suffered under you seem qualified to give an educated opinion. I've never grown either but have seen both and, to me, Felicia strikes me as being the prettier of the two, perhaps because the flowers are larger and "showier". I prefer her in your lovely photos also. Still, Cornelia is no slouch in the looks department.

This is the second year for my Felicia and Cornelia--but I moved Felicia, so I guess that makes this her first year. Before I moved Felicia, she was blooming at about 3 times the rate Cornelia was, but in her new spot, she hasn't bloomed at all this year. On the other hand, Cornelia is planted in perhaps a bit too much shade, so she may do better in more sun.

Cornelia has a "neater" bloom which is charming--but Felicia's more casual (slovenly?) bloom is more attractive to me. Felicia's blooms last longer and repeat faster also.

What it really amounts to is that it will take a couple more years before I can say with any confidence which one is the better performer, but at the moment, I do prefer Felicia.

Hope my "preliminary notes" help you make a decision.

Kate

I agree that Felicia is better as a freestanding plant. It's shrubby and usually sturdy unless it's in full bloom and rains. Mine reblooms very well in big flushes. Mine's by the hot street. Cornelia is more lax and needs a support, so might be good on your fence. Felicia is very fragrant. Cornelia is also fragrant but I think a little less so. I do remember seeing a picture of Felicia grown on an arch in Jon of Wessex's garden. I guess you could train it while canes are young.

Felicia

I think Lisa grows Felicia as a climber. Hopefully, if she feels up to it, she'll post some pics. I was going to post my first ever blooms of Cornelia, but they can't begin to compare to yours. I WISH I could post some of Felicia, but the d@#$ deer get them everytime! I haven't seen a one this year, so thank for your magnificent reminder of why I planted this rose. erasmus, what are your growing conditions for these two... full sun, heavy feeding?

Okay! Who am I kidding? Here's my first picture of my first blooms ever on Cornelia. I don't remember the fragrance being nearly as strong as that of Felicia. The most visible foliage and canes with thorns belong to New Dawn.

My Felicia is free standing. I have a baby Cornelia which seems more of a draper so far and has smaller blossoms on the baby plant.

Thank you so much for each and every one's comments and photos! Sorry for not replying earlier, we had a bit of a spring heat wave over here and then two of my girls got quite sick so we did not have much sleep or free time for the last couple of days. Wow, if their perfomance over here is only 1/2 of what I see in your photos it would be a gourgeous sight to behold!!! I think it sounds like Felicia would be the one to go for at present , although Cornelia's charm is difficult to ignore. Maybe, just maybe I might find space for both. Am I correct to assume that Felicia is a bit mor pink than Cornelia?

LG, I think the colors are pretty similar. Most of the time I think of Felicia as apricot. I usually don't feed mine that much. Most years I have just fed them in spring with some Rose Tone, or Plant or Holly Tone, maybe some 10-10-10, some alfalfa, and sometimes some manure. Oh, I used to get loads of compost also. I am surprised that the roses I have in beds by the hot street mostly do well. The soil is a little better in that part of my yard though.

I think Felicia is a bit more pink here.

I love Cornelia. Mine grows on a deck. Very fragrant.

Those are the best photos ever, oldrosarian.

Old Rosarian, what time of year do you prune your Felicia? Is that the normal spring pruning? The deer prune mine so I've yet to see a bloom this year, but I am wondering for next spring. It's only its first year in the ground cuz I had it in a pot last year.

'Felicia is more floriferous, where I live in California

-the flowers smell to me, like unto ripe watermelon, with a rose cologne finish.

-produces more flushes per year than Cornelia.

-blooms last longer on the plant, and in a vase

Cornelia has more visually interesting blooms

very attractive leaves.

-the rose blossoms have a sexy musk and rose scent.

By autumn it can throw out several 10' long canes.

I love Cornelia best among the pink Pemberton Hybrid Musks.

Lux.

I prune hard in the spring so it can make new growth as it warms up Tried it in the fall but it just wasn't as good.

Thanks for your kind words Sheila. I like to try and inspired people to grow roses and a picture is a thousand words.

Thank you so much for everyone's comments and descriptions! Oldrosarian, I agree, those photos are soooo lovely! I am going to start with Felicia and then see if I can add Cornelia at a later stage.

Cathy, I love your picture. It's a beautiful rose but I'm not sure it's Cornelia. It looks like it has more petals than Cornelia, more of an Austin shape, and is a little orangier and bigger. Just wondering if it's it. Where did you get it?

Cathy's beautiful rose looks very much like Colette to me. In any case, it is perfect in that spot.

! Now I guess I need to get Colette some point! I keep forgetting about this Rose. .. also old rosarian is Felicity Felicia?

I apologize. I do believe it is Colette.

You are correct vaporvac, it is Felicia not Felicity. Thanks for the heads up.

The thing I always loved about Cornelia was the contrast between those coppery pink buds, and the pale pink to apricot pink opened blooms - such a sweet combination and so full of that simple yet evocative Pemberton Musk charm.

She was one of the first 'old' roses I fell in love with, way back in the early 80's, from a written description in a David Austin catalogue, in the days when it was just a simple list, of mainly old roses, with few if any photographs (hard to imagine that now...)

Oh that's a good question, so I just popped out to look at my two roses... both are low thorn, very low in fact equally... hardly any near the base where you usually find prickles, and most of the canes are smooth, just a thorn or two here and there... I've known roses described in brochures as low thorn, that have more than either of these... so you really have no worries on this score...

Sheila, I just now got back into this thread and for some reason "Felicia in heat" as a description of one of your photographs really cracked me up!

Kathleen is no slouch.

OOh pretty. HMs are just about my favourites as they're so romantic! Ingrid, I laughed at the same thing!; 0

Here's a later picture of Cornelia blooming with Viking Queen. I really like this combo and hope to plant them together in another area of my yard. Click to enlarge!

Vaporvac, that's funny because I removed my Cornelia and replaced it with Viking Queen. For me, Cornelia looked lovely in the spring, but that was about it. I had hoped to grow it onto and over a 4' chain link fence, but the canes never wanted to grow long enough to do this. I always thought that maybe it would be nice on an obelisk. The foliage was also not especially healthy in my garden, not suffering from blackspot but getting spotty with anthracnose I think later in the summer. I have never grown Felicia, but would really like to try it! and Colette!

-Chris

That is funny, chris! My Cornelia is still in a pot being new this year from ARE. It's really starting to bloom now and has a couple of very long canes that are weeping over VQ and New Dawn. I bet it would look lovely on an obelisk. I got mine to go on a North facing wall, but decided to put her elsewhere where she'd get better light. I play musical roses so who know where she'll end up going! LOL! BTW, how is your VQ doing? From where did you buy yours? Mine has RMV and although she still does great I'd like to compare her to a non-virused bush.

Ingrid, you are right. I didn't realize how that would sound.

I’m very late to this lovely little party, but I DO happen to grow both Felicia and Cornelia in my my hot, dry So CA garden. Both Felicia and Cornelia are about 4-5? years old. I have both in quite a bit of shade. I have been in love with Felicia from the time she produced her very first bloom, and that wasn’t too long after her arrival in a 4” pot from Annie’s Annuals and Perennials. She grew like gangbusters immediately. Actually, Cornelia grew pretty quickly as well, but even though she arrived as a one gallon, she didn’t bloom at all for over a year. I know that’s pretty common, but in my garden/climate it’s not. With the year round growing season, and my rich soil, roses get going pretty quickly. (I know, I’m spoiled.). When Cornelia finally did decide to bloom, she only did so on the ends of 6-8F long canes, and mostly just in the Spring. I was NOT impressed. She behaved like a different rose this year!(probably year 4 or 5.). She bloomed flush after flush of beautiful blooms all along her weeping canes. She began in early Spring and still has some blooms now in mid October. I wonder what sort of blooming I would have gotten if I had given her any fertilizer?

Here’s some pictures of Cornelia’s blooms this year.

April ‘18

August ‘18

September ‘18 Obviously the single white rose isn’t Cornelia, just a neighbor.

All the pictures are beautiful! Hybrid musks are one of my favorite groups of roses too.

Vaporvac, my Viking Queen is from Roses Unlimited. I only received it this spring, so too soon to say anything just yet.

-Chris

I'm late to this party, too. Lisa, your comment may just have saved my Cornelia from extinction. I had three, and they just grew long, lanky canes with barely a flower. I culled two, and stuck the third behind a compost bin, near the bottom of the garden. Every year since, I've cut it to stubs, but never get around to getting rid of it. It threw out even longer (10') and lankier canes down there, (with a few flowers at the ends), as it's pretty shady. It hardly grew at all this year, and not a single flower Now I feel mean! I'll give it some love now, and confuse it utterly!

In the very old days, Cornelia used to get the very highest marks on the American Rose Society ratings list, and I confess, for years I wondered why. But now I know. For one thing, in those days when everyone relied on pesticides, her graceful foliage gets no disease. In The Fragrant Year, Helen Van Pelt Wilson and Léonie Bell write that you have to be a few feet away to smell the musks. The scent, which is produced by the stamens, is not so perceptible close up. They claimed that in full bloom Cornelia would "perfume not one garden but an entire neighborhood." They also recommend that musk roses in general be given time to build up wood before being judged.

I may be wrong here as a newbie, but I recall reading in multiple places that many of the HMs with long arching canes need to have the old unproductive canes that have already bloomed culled out to encourage new basals. This should be done on a yearly basis once the plant gets going. Does anyone have this experience or prune this way? I suspect nature will often do my pruning, but am just wondering.

Vaporvac, I prune my Ballerina that way. I'm enjoying the lovely hybrid musk photos shown in this thread. I've wanted Felicia for so long, but Lisa's Cornelia photos are just amazing, and now I want them both. Diane

One thing about it, though -- Hybrid Musks as a group are not "designed" for hot, dry conditions. They're going to need generous watering to succeed.

Now that you mention it Jeri, my Cornelia’s wonderful blooming DID begin about 4 months after having drip irritation installed. I wonder why I didn’t put two and two together. Perhaps it’s a combination of those long canes finally arching over AND the added water. Surely the extra water helped!

The day got away from me yesterday, and I forgot to return to talk about Felicia. Sorry about that.

For starters, neither of them sheds their petals cleanly. IMO the aged blooms are about equal in ugliness. Perhaps Felicia a bit uglier, but that might just be because my Felicia is out front and her spent blooms bother me more in such a visible place.

Cornelia’s aged blooms.

Felicia’s

Felicia is my favorite for various reasons. One is simply because I fell in love her picture and description in Annie’s catalog many years ago, and vowed to grow her someday. Sometimes the longer you wait for something, the sweeter it is when finally attained.

She’s also one of the very few roses that I occasionally detect a fragrance from without having to bury my nose in the blooms. It’s so dry here that fragrance rarely carries. I don’t detect much fragrance from Cornelia, but I can always smell Felicia. She sometimes even wafts for me, and that’s a rare thing around here.

Neither makes the very best cutting flower, but Felicia is better suited than Cornelia for my purposes. And then there’s Felicia’s color. Sometimes it’s more pink, and sometimes more peach. They have a soft baby powdered look to them that a photo can’t capture. Sometimes there’s a sheen to the petals that’s almost a light sparkle. It reminds me of a sprinkling of pixie dust.

My Felicia isn’t on my drip system, so I flood that bed with the hose about once a week. Her roots are in the shade, so that probably helps somewhat. That being said, she’s up against the foundation of the house, and a concrete breezeway. That means she gets extra lime in my already alkaline soil, and watered with my alkaline water. I get very little natural rain water. I have a “mophead” hydrangea in that bed that naturally bloomed pink for years. Now I add enough sulfur to keep the hydrangea blooming blue/purple, and it’s enough to keep the hybrid musks in that bed happy. If I see the hydrangea turning pink again, I know it’s time to acidify my soil again.

Felicia began blooming at a young age, and seems to always have at least some blooms on her. She appears to be so delicate and feminine, but has proven to be a strong rose. She bloomed through the heat of the summer. Mine is in lots of shade, and that’s probably why she has developed a very sprawling habit. I finally ordered one of those trellising kits to attach anchors to the house, and train her over the arches in front of my house. Now I just need to install them.

She’s still blooming now, and she’s one of my very favorite roses. There’s something special about her.

Here’s some pictures of her.

Well, Houzz claims I have “No photos in my library”. I’ve never had that message before. I’ll try again later. I hope this will post! Lisa

They posted. Who understands why Houzz does the things it does. And yes, your strategy for the HMs does work. But I think the issue of shade on the roots is important.

All in all, though, of the Pemberton HMs, the one that does the best for me is, and always has been 'Buff Beauty'. It's sort of an outlier, though, isn't it?

I like it at all of its stages; it does drop its petals cleanly, and it's fragrant (at least for me it is) and it's a good repeater.

Jeri, I always had buyers regret in choosing Cornelia over Buff Beauty. Truthfully, I still do. I have so many pink roses, and Buff Beauty would have been better in that spot. I’m not swapping them out now anymore so Cornelia it is! Your BB really makes me wish I had it. It’s such a beautiful rose.

Funny thing about the picture posting thing above. The photos I took today of the spent blooms,(which I uploaded directly from taking them with my iPhone) posted just fine. It was when I went to post some “glamour shots” of Felicia that I had stored in my phone, that I was informed that I “had no photos” or “my photo library was empty”, something like that. I KNOW that’s not the case. My phone is loaded with pictures. It’s the first time I’ve seen that one.

I’ll try again.

Nope! No go. Now, what’s going on here again?!?!? Lisa

Serendipity! I just popped back in after a couple weeks and landed on Vaporvac's and Diane's comments about Ballerina. Just what I needed to know. I will take your advice and prune out the canes with spent blooms, making room for new canes and basal breaks. How hard a pruning do you give the remaining canes? Red Ballerina, aka Marjorie Fair, is not a HM, so I assume she isn't pruned the same way? I hope this is not too off topic, staying in the family of hybrid musks.

I'll have to check my notes so hopefully Dian can comment. I did not know that Marjorie Fair wasn't hybrid musk. I really want that one.

Though so many of the hybrid musks are lovely, I have to say that in my opinion Buff Beauty takes the prize for beauty and fragrance. Years ago one old rose catalog used to recommend planting Buff Beauty and Cornelia draped along a fence.

For those of you growing Felicia free standing, what would you say its diameter is? I'm planting her in a new garden and don't want to plant anything else too close to her.

Buff Beauty has a lot of color variation. My plant has been declining over the years in too much shade.

Pippa, my Felicia is maybe 5 ft wide at the top. Vase shape.

Thank you Sheila that helps!

Vase shaped, Sheila? Other than periodically being in heat:) , is your Felicia in full sun? Mine is in quite a bit of shade, and I don’t even know how to describe her shape. Her roots are in the shade, and most of her sprawls forward, while about 1/4 of her canes head straight up to the roof. I guess she’s reaching for the sun. I’d better get that anchor kit installed sooner than later. Lisa

Mine has a narrower base, Lisa, and is upright in an arching out fashion at the top. Mine is in full sun. It does not seem to be a sprawler here.