** EUROPE **

Reported by Helene Pizzi

helene.pizzi@tin.it

THE ROMAN ROSE COLLECTION

Rome's Municipal Rose Garden, here on the Aventine Hill near the heart of Ancient Rome, stands on a site that has always had roses in its history. The Romans all loved roses, from every walk of life, slave to emperor.

Here today, the gardeners will soon be planting a new section to add to their collection of roses. This area will be dedicated to the roses of Ancient Rome, and no site could be more fitting.

If we look across the garden and a ways beyond, we can see the imposing ruins of the Roman emperors' palaces (see enlarged map - note: the "red points" are NOT active on our site). They were once covered with marble and were the setting for sumptuous parties and feasts where guests wore garlands of roses around their necks and heads. The scent of flowers was said to delay intoxication, so only after the guests had sipped rose-flavoured wines and eaten rose sherbets and rose flavoured puddings did the earnest drinking begin. They reclined on pillows stuffed with fragrant roses while rose petals were not only strewn on the marble floors around them but fluttered down from the high ceilings as well.

To meet such enormous demand, thousands of rose plants were grown in hothouses and watered with warm water to force them into bloom out-of-season. In addition, boatloads of roses were imported from Egypt, and many local farmers tore out olive orchards and vineyards to turn farmland into fields of roses; a much more lucrative crop. This caused the Roman poet Horace (65 - 8 BCE) much worry, and he wrote that he feared for the economy.

Pliny the Elder, who died at the age of 56 in Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, wrote about the Genus Rosae in volume XXI of his 37 volume Historia Naturalis, giving us some idea as to what roses were known. He describes the twelve species then known.

Pliny wrote about a 'Prickly Rose’ and a 'Bramble Rose’, which have not been identified. He mentions several roses that are all thought to be forms of the double flowered R. gallica. Additionally, he writes about a red 'Milesian Rose’, the 'Praeneste Rose’, the 'Trachinian Rose’, the 'Cyrene Rose’, the 'Mucetum Rose’ the 'Alabandian Rose’, a 'Little Greek Rose’, plus a 'Carthage Rose’ with winter bloom. It is believed that these roses were named after the places where they were cultivated.

Another rose known in Roman times was the R. damascena. According to Coggiatti, notwithstanding the name damascena, there is no proof this ancient rose originated in Damascus at all.

There were also the 'centifolia' roses. Some think that the 'centifolia' rose that was mentioned by Pliny (as well as Herodotus and Theophrastus) was actually a very full R. gallica; others believe that it was a rose that is now extinct. For five centuries R. centifolia was not mentioned by anyone. Then the name was used for a rose that was definitely a hybrid from the south of France, which was made popular by the Flemish artists in the 16th and 17th centuries CE. This R. centifolia is definitely not the same rose the Romans knew by this name.

The 'bifere' roses of Paestum had a second flush of bloom in autumn. In 400 BCE, parallel to the Via Sacra in Paestum, there was a mile-long bed of roses planted by the Sybarites. Sometimes called "Semperflorens" or R. x damascena bifera, or 'Quatre saisons’ and 'Autumn Damask’, this rose was special and unusual because it produced flowers in the fall as well as the late spring, unlike all others known to the Romans which had only one bloom. In September of 62 CE, when Nero and Poppaea visited Paestum, she had all the roses picked to cover her couch and then to be used to perfume the asses’ milk in which she bathed.

Virgil praised these twice-blooming roses of Paestum: 'canerem biferique rosaria Paesti’, which brought wealth to the town, as there was a big demand for cut roses. Virgil also talked about the roses that the poet Catullus had brought from Paestum and had planted in his garden on Lake Garda. Ruins of his villa (the second largest Roman villa in the world, after Hadrian’s) are open to the public today, but alas, no trace is left of his fragrant roses nor are there traces anywhere in Paestum of the roses of its past.

Quite probably, the rose we know today as R. gallica versicolor, or 'Rosa Mundi,’ was a spontaneous mutation of ancient times which produced the first variegated rose - red with white slashes.

Without a doubt, the Romans were familiar with R. canina, with its simple, five-petalled blooms. They called it "Cynorrhodon" ('Dog Rose'), as it was used as a medicine for rabies. They also knew the R. alba, which probably derived from R. canina and either R. x damascena or R. gallica.

R. sempervirins was called "Coroniola" by the Romans, named so because the thornless, flexible canes were used in the making of crowns for elegant parties and banquets. This is the same rose that still grows wild near the ruins of his nephew, Pliny the Younger’s villa, southeast of Rome. Perhaps the R. sempervirins, a tough survivor, growing right now near the ancient Via Severiana, the road which passes the ruins of Pliny’s villa, is a direct descendent of a rose used for the crowns of one of Pliny’s parties nearly 2,000 years ago.

The R. sempervirens that will be planted in the City of Rome's Municipal Rose Garden's Ancient Rose Collection will be taken from this wild plant. If you are in the Pineta di Castelfusano park which flanks the Roman seacoast, this rose is still thriving there, right near the road; completely ignored by almost everyone who passes by but in plain sight for those who look.

Time passes quickly - our lives are fleeting - but many of the old Roman Roses still live on. Shortly, they will be back, to be seen in Rome’s exquisite Municipal Rose Garden, overlooking their own history. The setting and the lovely roses are sure to leave you with many pleasant thoughts. We will see you there!

** SOUTH ASIA **

Reported by Girija and Viru Viraraghavan

Girija-veera@eth.net

"GARLAND" AND OTHER HERITAGE ROSES IN INDIA

A large number of heritage roses are grown in India, though, unfortunately, their popularity is on the decline. Current taste seems to favor the brighter, sometimes excruciatingly gaudy shades of the modern roses. However, one section of the heritage roses - namely those used for making garlands - are still very popular. Cultivation of such roses on a field scale is a unique feature of the Indian rose scene.

Most of the Heritage roses that do well in India belong to the Tea/Noisette or Bourbon and China groups. Among the Teas, we have many which do exceptionally well:  Madame Falcot, Devonienses, Mrs. B.R.Cant, and Lady Hillingdon. In the Deccan Plateau, which is the southern portion of central India, Madame Falcot can be seen growing happily in almost every garden.

Of the Noisettes, too, we have quite a number. Lamarque, Rev d'Or, Celine Forestier, Madame Drouit (which is a sport of Reine Marie Henriette), and, of course the peerless, Marechal Niel. We have seen plants of Marechal Niel with several hundred blooms in climes as widely disparate as Hyderabad (central India) and the famous Shalimar Gardens of Kashmir, which, at 5,000 feet elevation, enjoys a cool, dry climate. These gardens were built by the Mughal Emperor, Jehangir, in about 1500 A.D.

From the Bourbon group, the original one, Rose Edward, is one of the commonest of roses, as also are Gruss en Teplitz and Souvenir de la Malmaison.

Paul Neyron, Frau Karl Druschki and the two Dicksons - Hugh and George, are the representatives of the Hybrid Perpetuals in India.

In the Chinas category, we have Cecile Brunner, Perle d'Or, Archduke Charles, and Old Blush. Perhaps Archduke Charles is the most adaptable to the different and quite often difficult climates of this huge country. Another China, probably Cramoisi Superieur, is widely grown in the capital, New Delhi's gardens, having been planted as part of the landscape of the official bungalows of colonial British India by the architect Edward Lutyens. An interesting rose is a pink China, somewhat resembling Cecile Brunner but much more robust. This is a stout bush, almost five feet tall, displaying extraordinary adaptation to various kinds of climates, ranging from tropical conditions of the east coast to the comparatively cooler central plateau.  (Ed.: this rose could be the pale pink to white sport of Cecile Brunner, Spray Cecile Brunner, which was introduced by Howards Nursery of Los Angeles, California in 1941. Spray Cecile Brunner produces trusses of blooms in large pyramidal-shaped panicles, with the topmost bud opening first. Spray Cecile Brunner is most often encountered under the trade name, "Bloomfield Abundance," which it is most defiantly not!) The closely related Perle d'Or is largely confined to the hilly areas, like Kodaikanal, where we live.

Coming now to what we call 'garland roses': as mentioned earlier, an interesting feature of the Indian scene is the growing of these roses, on a field scale, for use in garlands, bouquets, and as loose flowers in temple worship, and for weddings and other traditional occasions.

The most popular rose for this is Rose Edward, which is grown extensively in many parts of the country but most especially in the tropical delta of the River Cauvery, in the extreme south, as well as in the foothills of the Himalayas and on the plains of northern India. In these northern areas, apart from using Rose Edward for garlands, because of its rich and intensely heady fragrance, it is used for the extraction of rose oil, rose water, and for making a variety of rose products. Rose Edward is also used as a stock rose for budding; particularly for plants to be grown in pots.

Out of the hot desert sands, in the western state of Rajasthan, farmers achieve the unbelievable feat of growing acres and acres of Gruss en Teplitz. While a goodly portion of the blooms are kept for garlands, the bulk of them are sun-dried, packed and sent off, on a daily basis, by air to the Middle East; especially to Mecca, Islam's holiest site. In the dry tracts of Gujarat State, also in the west, farmers grow large terrains of Souvenir de la Malmaison, also for use as garlands.

Another rose grown on a field scale for garlands is a red to dark-pink Bourbon which is very popular in the central regions. This has been tentatively identified as Eugene E. Marlitt - this rose is the same as the one called "Maggie" in Bermuda and the southern U.S.A.

Many of these old roses  were originally brought by ship from China to Calcutta, the port city in the east, which was British India's first capital (before they shifted their capital to the newly built city of New Delhi) and where William Roxburgh (1751-1815 CE) set up and developed the Botanic Gardens. The rose plants would have been on their way from China to England, and Calcutta was a halfway house where they were kept to recover from one journey, before embarking on their final lap, round the Cape of Good Hope, to England. Over the years, and centuries, these plants multiplied a hundredfold, permeating to all corners of the country. We now have a number of other heritage roses in India, but unfortunately, many are without names.

Contact between India and China, through the land route (The Silk Road) as well as the sea routes, have been in existence for many centuries; much earlier than in Western colonial times, which began from 1600 onwards and continued till 1947. Some of these heritage roses without names could well be direct imports in the course of trade between India and China and we are currently engaged in identifying some of these.

Two examples will show how complicated but interesting the subject is. The first is of an Iranian traveler, Rashid-ud-din, who visited western India in 1300 CE and remarked that 60 kinds of roses were being grown even then. What are these? The second example is of that relating to the Vijayanagar Empire of South and Central India (14th to 16th centuries).

Portuguese travelers, Domingo Paes and Frederico Nuniz, mention that, during the Dussehra celebrations (which is a week long religious festival and which are held normally in the month of October), the king would be received and garlanded with white roses. What is this white rose which flowers in autumn in such profusion as to be used for garlands? There are many other instances of roses being grown in the gardens of kings and nobles as well as being mentioned in ancient texts. Follow up on these should yield information of great importance to us in the rose world.

[Dear Clair,
We have seen both the standard Cecile Brunner as well as the climbing form, as also Bloomfield Abundance, but not Spray Cecile Brunner. So ultimately, you are the best judge whether this rose could be Spray C. Brunner. As far as we can make out, our rose doesn’t have a pyramidal pannicle. We remember this rose from the early 1960s, where it was growing in the rose garden of a house we were staying in, in a rather obscure small town, north of Hyderabad in central India. Judging by the size of the plant, the rose would have been planted considerably earlier. So there is some doubt whether Spray Cecile Brunner could have reached such an out-of-the-way location. In our farm in Hosur (near Bangalore), one plant makes a robust bush about ten feet tall.  But by all means, go ahead and put the editorial note as it may be better to have a tentative identification, rather than none. Our severe drought is continuing, water is getting short, and we are losing our smaller plants. Wish the rains would come. Girija and Viru]

** UNITED KINGDOM**

A Letter From Peter Beales

Dear Rose Gardener,

Regrettably we have now had to abandon our efforts to export roses to the USA and therefore, in common with most other UK nurseries, we are unable to accept orders from the USA for the following reasons:  

Not surprisingly, the rose industry in America can now satisfy the increasing demand for classic roses, and consequently, our share has steadily declined to no more than about 3% of our total exports.  

Your country is the only one in the world whose Department of Agriculture requires a soil test every 12 months.  All others simply require tests every two or four years, or at most only once during the two- year life cycle of each crop.

The problem we face, therefore, is that each test requires 30 core samples of soil per acre and is carried out by a Plant Health Inspector from our Ministry of Agriculture.  If this test is done before we plant and is found negative with respect to potato eel worm cysts, we receive a Certificate of Health, which lasts for the lifetime of the crop. If it is positive, we simply find other land on which to grow and which is clear of the cysts.  

The difficulty with a further test 12 months into the crop is that should viable eel worm cysts be found at that time, it renders the entire crop useless for sale; not only to other countries, but also to our home market.  Since 60 core samples of soil doubles the chance of finding a cyst, we are faced with a risk we are not prepared to take for just 3% of exports.  

As I said earlier, there are a now a number of good producers of our type of roses in the USA and Canada, and should you wish, we will gladly provide you with a list of suppliers from whom you may be able to purchase the roses you require.  

We are very sorry to disappoint you in this way, but nevertheless we wish you success in finding your roses and hope you gain much enjoyment from them.  

This season - 2003/4 - we intend having a soil test carried out at the end of March, 2004; after all our orders are dispatched.  We will then have a window of two weeks to send our orders to America assuming no eel worms are found.  

Yours sincerely,  

Peter Beales

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