What a gorgeous rose! I do not recognize it, and the only thing I can think of is that he or you goes to any public rose gardens in Malta and see if they have it identified. Or, look around at private rose gardens you can see from the street and see if you can see one. Or (probably the best), see if there is anything like a "rose society" there, and ask them. I have an intuition that it might be a rose which is not uncommon in that part of the world.

Jackie

I have no idea....but I wanted to say how beautiful it is!!

My first impression was and is sea foam. But I have not grown it, nor am I the best with iding plants. I hope someone else can be more help.

I agree it is a pretty rose, @rosecanadian and @jacqueline9CA !

I have looked around but there is no rose society in Malta. There is a horticultural society but they don't seem to be focused on roses too much. Malta is definitely not a big place for rose growing, although it has been gaining in popularity over the last few years when the pandemic gave gardening a boost. I have been on the lookout but so far haven't seen anything like this rose in peivate gardens here.

Thank you for your suggestion of Sea Foam, @Alana8aSC ! I do see a similarity but it HMF says that Sea Foam is a 3 foot shrub and this one is at least twice that size. Perhaps it is sea foam, I'll try to look up more pics of Sea Foam and see if it matches.

Here are a few more pics of the rose, showing buds, blooms, and foliage.

My finger for scale: the blooms are pretty small.
As the blooms age the pistils become more visible and are reddish. The blooms get pretty fried in the heat, but that's no sign of weakness on their part: for some reason the owner planted this rose against a south facing wall, which is tough for any plant here in zone 11.

The flowers are "high shouldered" and appear either solitary or in small clusters of two or three.

Another potentially distinctive feature is the sepals. While five is common, there are a lot that only have four sepals and I have even found a few buds with only three.

You can take stated dimensions of roses with a grain of salt. Note them, but they don't always take into account the full range of conditions in which a variety grows, and how large, in particular, some roses can get when they have favorable conditions and are little pruned.

P.S. Sorry, no idea what your rose is.

What Melissa said. In zone 11, growing on a South facing wall, that rose has to be very heat hardy to be surviving at all, and with nice dark green leaves! That is sort of why I thought it might be from that area. I have noticed in my zone 9/10 garden, when I moved some roses in to a new part of my garden which gets more sun, that some of them changed remarkably. The leaves and blooms both got a lot smaller. I compared one to another of the same rose which was in partial shade, and the leaves on the one in hotter conditions with more sun for a longer time per day were 1/3rd the size of the one in partial shade! So, you cannot try to base IDs on what it says in a book or on HMF, or even photos of a rose, if the conditions are very different.

Jackie

Thank you for your replies @Melissa Northern Italy zone 8 and @jacqueline9CA !

Your posts are giving me an idea. I'm terrible at rooting cuttings, never had success with that before, but I will try to take some. If I can get one to strike it would be interesting to grow it grow in a pot in a morning sun only and see how it would behave there.

Some description of the fragrance might be helpful: "green apple" Wichuriana? "sweet Tea" (this may be my own description for a soft scent that pops up now and then in Hybrid Teas, Chinas, and Teas)? woody Tea scent? a touch of pepper? scent that carries on the air? fragrance reminiscent of old rose? There are many others, of course, and noses differ in how they perceive a particular scent, and whether they perceive it at all.

I will check my Seafoam flowers, but I dont think its a match. Seafoam is often billed as a goundcover rose due to its lax canes, and while my plant is still young, it seems to be following this habit. The main defining characteristic Ive noticed on Seafoam are its iridescent leaves. They are so unusual and havent grown out of this tendency. This was a very popular rose a while back and widely available so there is a possibility that it just grows differently in your climate as mentioned above. Definitely try cuttings! Its a trooper!

seasiderooftop - I think rooting cuttings from that rose is a great idea! If you look at the current thread called "rose cuttings failure", it is FULL of good ideas about how to root cuttings. I suggest you try 5 or 6 of them, and see if any works on this rose.

Jackie

Thanks @Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley that info about the seafoam foliage is useful! This rose has matte foliage that becomes darker and semi-glossy with age but nothing like that wet shine on Seafoam's leaves.

@Melissa Northern Italy zone 8 The scent on this one is sweet; I've never grown teas but perhaps "sweet tea" would be a good definition for the scent. Definitely not the old rose scent of my damasks or HP's, nor any kind of fruit like some of my moderns (not lemony for sure, not apricot nor raspberry nor apple). The fragrance doesn't waft, but it's not weak either, I just have to stick my nose into it to smell it.

@jacqueline9CA I will read that thread and try different methods, thank you! The good thing is with a rose this size I have plenty of places to take cuttings from without feeling like I am depleting the mother plant, so I can give it multiple tries.

Swany?

Maybe a Meilland rose that thrives in the heat? It looks similar to Blanche Colombe - but as said by others roses change dramatically with the weather. Pretty no matter what :)

I looked at Swany and Blanche Colombe on HMF. Good guesses re what the blooms look like (allowing for the extreme heat to have made them smaller on the mystery), but the leaves on the mystery rose are elongated, and very pointed. The leaves on S and BC appear to me to be much rounder, and not as pointed. The rose I had in too much sun and heat had leaves 1/4 the size of the same plant in partial sun, but the shape of the leaves was the same.

seasiderooftop - I think if you try to root cuttings, using several different techniques, you will be successful. (Remember to wait until they have made roots, not just leaves. If they are naughty and produce buds, cut those off immediately.). If you then plant a rooted cutting in partial shade, it will be interesting to see what it does. Please let us know!

Jackie

Beautiful! Ive always wanted Swany.

Swany is a great rose, get it @Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley!

My best "Rose You've Never Heard Of." Clean as it can be no spray. Since I've got it in a non-rose garden, it rarely gets any of the attention the other roses get and is totally reliant on rain for water. It just does its thing. Great for a vase too! Here it is playing best supporting actor in a spring arrangement.

Oh!!! What a dream arrangement and wonderful news that its healthy for you in TN. I just assumed it wouldnt do well with humidity and since I never hear anyone growing it, just kept it in the back of my mind. I think Peter Beales had a gorgeous picture of it gowing on the side of a large pond out of a tree stump, cascading over the sides. So dreamy. I planted seafoam near a stump trying to recreate it, but its not the same without the pond! Thank you for sharing pics and so much info!

Wow! Your Swany is really beautiful @subk3 !

I love the bouquet!

I agree though, that the mystery rose doesn't seem to be Swany.

@MetteBee_Copenhagen8b thank you for the suggestion of Blanche Colombe ! That is another gorgeous white, and the size seems right. But the high centered bloom form of BC is much more "hybrid tea" than in the mystery rose.

Here are a few more pictures taken today. She looks like she's about to start another big flush.

The buds look pointy when the sepals are still closed, but reveal a round ball of petals inside. The petals keep that "ball in the center" appearance (but not real balling) until the bloom is fully open.

Also here's a pic of a giant thick new basal that appeared this summer to show the thorns and leaves, as you say @jacqueline9CA the leaves are rather elongated and pointy (and yes, this poor thing needs some iron, I'll get on it this weekend).

Could your rose be a slightly atypical (as Jackie suggested due to harsh conditions eg of heat, lack of fertiliser and regular pruning over years) Iceberg, I wonder? I'm not overly familiar with it, and HMF photos are as so often nearly all endless glamour shots of blooms and not much in the way of usefully detailed IDing pics, but still...

comtessedelabouche - you may be on to something! I grow Cl Iceberg, so I just ran out and grabbed a bloom and a hip and a leaf off my bush. The 2 (two) blooms currently on my bush (our roses go sort of dormant in our hot dry summers) look exactly like the rose in question, including the shape of the petals and look of the the stamens, except my 2 blooms are a bit less double, but there are photos on HMF showing more double and less double blooms on Cl Iceberg. The leaves are definitely the same long, pointed shape. There are a few hips on my bush, with very long sepals such as the Iceberg buds have. I don't know if not having hips still on the bush in the Spring might be because of the extreme heat conditions.

seasiderooftop - here is a link to Cl Iceberg on HMF - check out all of the photos and let us know if you think this might be the rose you are trying to identify.

https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.3361

Jackie

moving this up

Kim might be the one we need for this - he's pretty keen on Iceberg, IIRC. I seem to remember him making a very spirited defence of it on at least one occasion, defying those of us who might be prone to the occasional bit of snobbishness about it, due to its ubiquity... :-)

And, actually, ubiquity is one factor I thought might favour this ID, if as the OP suggests the country/area it's in doesn't have a big specialist rose growing culture. In that case, as a well-known, internationally popular, reliable sort of rose it might be more likely to have been sourced originally in a general store or garden centre/shop than some of the more more unusual or exotic possibilities.

Sorry for not replying earlier!

A lot going on over here.

Thank you for your replies @comtessedelacouche (10b S.Australia: hotdryMedclimate) and @jacqueline9CA !

I see what you mean about the elongated leaves being similar to Iceberg.

I grow the shrub version of Iceberg in a pot in all day full sun (and love it). There are several clear differences: the mystery rose has no hint of pink anywhere, whereas Iceberg's buds often have a pinkish tint. The buds are also more pointy, unlike the rounded ball-shape of the mystery rose that I showed in my pics .

Iceberg also lacks the very mean thorns this one has, and the blooms are high above the leaves whereas the mystery rose's are nested low among them (I think that's what is known as "high shouldered", like some OGR such as Jacques Cartier or Rose de Rescht).

Finally, Iceberg has very little scent except in the cooler months here, whereas this one is definitely fragrant.

So I really doubt this could be Iceberg. But maybe the climbing Iceberg is very different from the shrub form?

It doesn't impress me as Iceberg. Cl Iceberg has significant prickles. As the mutation moves more toward full climbing, the size and quantity of prickle increase dramatically. You have access to roses there we'll never see here and nothing I'm familiar with looks like your photos.

Thanks Kim, I was hoping you'd chime in.

SeasideRT does say (in her most recent comment) the rose in question does have 'very mean thorns' and you can actually see them in some of the photos, on the older canes.

But there do seem to be further significant differences from what she has said, about the way the blooms sit and also that thing about the ball shape in the buds.

The photos did immediately remind me of a very beautiful example of a Climbing Iceberg I saw on an older colonial building here in SA, which surprised me at the time since it didn't look much like other (non-climbing) Icebergs I'd seen.

So I wondered from that, if maybe it does vary, and wondered if it might have produced some sort of mutation or just a variation in appearance there on Malta. I heard somewhere Iceberg had a particular tendency to mutate, including producing those different coloured sports as well as the climbing version, and also some other variation I think I saw a photo and description of recently but have now forgotten the what and the where of.... :-)

@comtessedelacouche (10b S.Australia: hotdryMedclimate) of course anything is possible and it's EXTREMELY common for a rose to appear totally different in a different climate, but to my eye, the plant doesn't have the "Iceberg feel". After having maintained MANY hundreds of them over twenty-plus years, Iceberg's traits jump out at me and they aren't jumping from those photos. Perhaps this might be of interest... https://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=66.711

roseseek - you are a treasure for us.

Jackie

Thank you, Jackie

Yes - thank you Kim - I'm sorry I'm not keeping up regularly with the forum at the moment, or just reading a little but not commenting, because I'm really not up to it and silly Houzz won't let us just 'Like' an original post any more, which is a shame. Because if someone goes to the trouble of posting something, especially if one includes photos, I think it's nice they should be acknowledged and thanked, even if one has nothing in particular of any value to say, or the energy to say it.

But, anyway, yes, from your article I see it does look as if Iceberg is very variable, but I must bow to your long experience if you're convinced this is unlikely to be one such.

Could be a seedling of something? Maybe even an Iceberg progeny, with a little bit of something else in it. :-)

I do hope this rose eventually gets identified - perhaps the best resource would just be anyone living nearby who grows roses - you never know.

Jackie

I hope it can be identified too, @jacqueline9CA !

She is full of buds and going into a lavish fall flush, I'm waiting to see if the blooms will look any different once our temps start coming down a little, which might be next week.

This morning:

I'll be taking the cuttings next month, I'll post here if I have any success with them.

As I continue to research on HMF, I wonder if she might be related to Lamarque or something similar.

A lot of the HMF pics of Lamarque remind me of her, but the mystery rose has "fringes" (rather, little leaf-like things, not sure what the technical term is) on the sepals, as you can see on the unopened buds in the pic above.

That foliage and those sepals in the latest photo are rather "Hybrid Perpetual" to my eye.

Thank you @roseseek ! That's very helpful.

Looking through the white HP's on HMF, the most similar might be Nuria de Recolons (Dot, 1933).

Unfortunately there are very few pictures up for me to compare all the features. A few things such as scent and height don't really match, but as several have said here such things can be variable.

https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.4508&tab=36

I grow Lamarque, and your rose does not look like it to me. However, I looked at Nuria de Recolons on HMF, and the photos and descriptions of the flat shape of the bloom, what it looks like when fully open, etc. do look like your rose IMO.

Jackie