The Perfect Rose.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 30 August 1910, Page 4

The Perfect Rose.

(From the Daily Mail.) French, American, English, and nbove all, Irish gardeners have recently develope<l the art of manufacture in flowers to such a pitch that each year in a single genus several score of new "creations" are unfolded before our eyes. The keenest rosarirtn pants bdhind in vain if he attempts to keep up with the rate of production. There is no man alive who can name you at sight half the roses that now exist. U baffles the brain to hold the names and ingenuity to describe the colours. Not even with the help of such, hybrid terms as " terra-cotta salmon' has description approached the most popular of the tints, the tawny dye that floods the petals with an even subtler suffusion than was ever boasted by the 'old friend and notable parent "William Allan Richardson." It has, therefore, become necessary to simplify, to keep hdld of some distinctions that are plain and fe>v if we are to have any Knowledge of the gorgeous multitude of briars and iroses which give supreme colour to the later days of June. Are these now roses any good to anyone? Had we not better come to t'ie point reached by the _ Dutch Imlb-growers, who have decided to leave novelty alono and set theii backs to the work of growing perfectly the sorts that are? THE HYBRIDISER AT WORK. The trouble is that most of these new roses are not properly hybrids; they are rather tho result sor crossbreeding oross-breds. The growers, that is, take the show and artificial-ly-manufactured sorts and combine infinitely their qualities, rather than spend time in the more drastic work of attempting to combine original stock of different habits. The employment is seductive but highly artificial The hybridisor at work looks more like a mediaeval chemist than a gardeniser. His roses grow iu pots in a wafni glttsS-house. As they coitle into bud he proceeds with hi®' tools; his sharp lancet is used to out a slip through the petals, his fine tweezers nip off the anther heads, an dhis soft brush picks up pt.llen from another plant. Round the "treated" heads nuisliii bags are tied, and when, after a year's waitir , his seed is set and the seedling grown, the tinv buds are, biukted on to a briar stock before the seedling has tinie to flower. So the new flower is born generally with the shape Of the mother and the coldua of the father plant. _ . Such roses concern principally the exhibitors at shows. lii Our open gardens all can wait, to pick out the brat of a nnmbe rof years. A new hybrid perpetual is of no matter to us The H.P.'s are so near .porfect.on as to make indistinguishable alleged advances. But there are other classes of hybrids that mean ir.ucli to every gardener. The supremo example of the right sort oi ncvolty is the Penzance briar. THE " PENZANCE BRIARS." The specialists who spend their time in aiming at such productions as this, instead of "gilding refined gold" by crossing already perfect hybrids. are the real benefactors. Every rose-lover sjiould know the history of these Penzance briars that emerged from the garden of Lord Penzance, for they are the best sign of coming glories. One parent is our native English sweetbriar, sweetest of all wild flowers, which has passed on the full fragrance of its green leaves to the offspring. This parent is of pure stock. Theothei parent is the hybrid perpetual ol mixed origin. Its family is old and interesting historically. The character conies from the rose of Damasca j which was probably introduced into England duiring; the Crusades. The excellence of this rose was its power to flower again and again. All our native briars and, so far as we know, most other roses except the China from iwhich tho Teas sprang, flcwered once early in the summer. But the iiose of Damascus, not greatly different from the common monthly rose that blossoms in a tfousand cottage gardens even in tli*. grip of winter, had this recurrent power, this supreme quality of a second bloom, which has been handed on and increased in the hybrid parpetuals, to which other parents added of colour and numerous petals. To the astonishment of men of scir: o and the delight oi garden-:.s, the:;e hybrids were crossed v, :i ! : sweetbriar, to which thov lent t. i-ir colours, their reds and tawny yellows. The Damask brought in the twelfth century by some Crusaders found its right niate in tie middle of the nineteenth, when French prisoners first opened out the future of the rose.

"ANNIE OF GEI ER STEIN " BLOOMS. We with admiring wond'ei the arched shoots of "Anne of Geierstein" flaming these June evenings in o'ur gardens. But its sprays are as 'full of promise as performance. Its blooms are not yet double; it flowers, save by a sort oi accident, only through one brief period. May not the time be coming when we shall have roses which, ji the mass serve all purposes and individually approach _ nearer to an inclusion of afl the virtues: perpetual. sweet-scented' both in leaf and flower bright-coloured, double? Towards_ such ideals we approach quite rapidly. It is only' sixty years or so since autumn-flowering roses, now of infinite variety, have graced our gardens. It is only eighteen years since Lotdi Penzance's triumph. It is only in this century that climbing and creeping and pillar roses have reached anything appioaching splendour and variety. Or occasions ''Dorothy Perkins" will flower into winter, and for all its creeping parentage will climb a high tree. THE RAMBLERS. But am -o; all these rambling roses—'Wielhuriii, multiflora and the rest—tho Iv:st picture, as it seems to me, o: the possibility of the rose is such ro.s;" as the "Longworth Rambler. It is lusty as a ramblei should be. Vat in its other virtues it is farthi l r from the older ramblers than fro".i the showiest lof the beddmg r. srs. Its flor o;-s are double and well form.- T, singularly beaui!. in a'' ' H 'l; its habit of growth, the angle and stoop of the shoots are i foliage is gracious. A litter Stella Grey" and many others nave like qualities, but the ll an d individual habit give tl>p Longworth" a certain preeminence, to the eye if not altogether to the reason. Indeed, the ideal is almost reached when all is considf. 1 With Nitida" to carpet the lou.ghest space with paterns of pink <i nap, as it were, not eighteen inches deep; with W churiana to tumble in splendid profusion over hanks and pillars IWn "T 1 ? posts and tr ees ; with Penzance briars strong in growth r°ofr S hr^ our hedges; with several scoire exhibition 6aCh yeai i of I tlle gorgeous a?"S ' alrea^' y Ascribed a? the extravagance of perfection wc have not much fault to find with the manufacturers" who combine beauties or travellers who fetch tho hnars from the ronnd world. If fchey can add hardiness to the Teas Ohin<!Lr> Se i™ St j reme mher the Chinese clime and the South French ytirdens of their first commingler il they will add ; more weight of bloom and prolonged flowering to our per toi a 'Sb'e?q n b f Sid€S glVe us amon A