• 100/2015

1 favorite vote.  

Pink blend.

Bred by M.S. Viraraghavan (India, 2015).

Hybrid Clinophylla, Tea.  

Deep pink, light pink shading, white shading.  Mild to strong, spice fragrance.  25 to 40 petals.  Average diameter 4".  Full (26-40 petals), borne mostly solitary bloom form.  

Medium, compact.  Medium, semi-glossy, medium green foliage.  

We call this a ‘patio rose’as it is a Tea rose, but a small compact plant, which can be grown in a pot.

‘RICHARD ROSE’

Clinophylla Tea

A compact continuous flowering shrub, with large flowers, which are not at all bothered by heavy rain ( they don’t get sodden and limp). Can be grown in a pot.

The fragrance is not like that of a typical Tea rose. It has a distinctive spicy fragrance -- we think this has come from the species, R. clinophylla. A very nice fragrance indeed.

A new seedling, from 2015 that we have been testing, and which we have named for Richard Rose, who first discovered the species R clinophylla, the tropical rose species we have been working with to get new hybrids.

Mr David Prain, the Director of the Calcutta Botanical Garden wrote in 1888 to Monsieur Crepin, the well known taxonomist and Director at the Meise Botanical Garden and Herbarium , near Brussels, Belgium:

"The chief of the Post Office in the province of Oudh- R. Rose Esq.- an ardent gardener himself, visited these gardens last week and told me that a year ago he was ordered to go down to Dacca in East Bengal to have charge of the postal arrangements for this postal province (which includes Sylhet) for some time. While there, his duties took him on a journey such as I have described,( going by boat through rivers and streams, and little lakes called ‘jheels’) and he found when sailing though these jheels that from end to end of the province they were full of a wild rose, hitherto unknown to him, which had no leaves upon it and was in full fruit only the fruits being above the water. This fact he had mentioned on returning to Lucknow ( now the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh) to his friends there who said it could not be a rose at all, but he had brought seeds away with him; some of which germinated and throve quite well till the ensuing hot weather (that is, April) when all died one by one within a month.

This account is that of a very observant man, and it supplies at one moment an explanation to all the difficulties I have had in considering the habits of this rose".

With the naming of this rose for Richard Rose, we continue with our project of naming our gigantea and clinophylla hybrids for those hardy souls who discovered these species, braving great odds. We have named our gigantea hybrids for Sir George Watt, Sir Henry Collett, and Frank Kingdon Ward. The rose ‘Sir George Watt’ is planted in the Logan Botanical Garden in Scotland near the town of Lockerbie, where he lived after retirement from colonial India, and died. .The rose ‘Sir Henry Collett’ has been given to one of his descendants. The rose ‘Frank Kingdom Ward’ is planted near his grave in Grantchester, near Cambridge, U.K.

Similarly we have named a Rosa leschenaultiana hybrid for Leschenault de la Tour, who discovered the species on our hills in the 18th century. We would love to have a plant of this rose ‘Leschenault de la Tour’planted at his grave in a Paris cemetery.

We would like to track down the descendants of this Mr Richard Rose, Esq., who was Deputy Postmaster General in colonial days, and who first discovered Rosa clinophylla ( then called Rosa involucrata) around 1888. His son settled in South Africa and a band of our friends there have been assiduously searching for any of the family still living, but they have not been successful so far. We are hoping that they will find someone, so we can tell them about this rose.

Prickles: Very few, red , pointing straight; rounded foliage.