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'Common Monthly' rose Reviews & Comments
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Margery Fish writes in 'A Flower for Every Day' (published by The Gardening Club, 1965). Mrs Fish's garden East Lambrook Manor is in Somerset in the south-west of England:
"My next choice, I think, would be a China rose. We were lucky in finding a healthy China rose beside the door into the garden. There were one of these roses in the first garden I remember, but we always called them "monthly" roses in those days. The flowers haven't the colour, the shape or the strong perfume of Albertine but they bloom in every month of the year. I have picked them at Christmas, and I enjoy the sight of the tree in June when it is covered with blossoms. We prune our old rose drastically and spray it when it is attacked by greenfly, and it remains strong and healthy. I think it must have been grown by our back door for at least a hundred years. A friend in the next village was born in this house, and she is now over eighty and says that the rose was there when her parents came to the house a good many years before she was born".
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'Old Blush' still growing by the door into the garden at East Lambrook Manor. 14/6/17
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Unusual way of growing it.
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Possibly it is 'Old Blush, Climbing.'
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Makes sense. I hadn't realised there was a climbing sport. Didn't think of that.
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Andrew, the photos and the references are quite historic. Well done for adding them. Do you think they should be added to the 'Old Blush Cl.' Page? (and have you struck this bush?)
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Page, 83 of 'A Flower for Every Day'. Comparing pictures, in the descriptions, I now think this is the bush form. The climber has more singular flowers along is branches rather than clusters like this typically produced by the bush. So, yes, Give me caffeine, it’s an unusual way of growing it. BTW, the description of 'Old Blush, Cl.' Says that it was introduced in 1792, that is a year before the introduction date of ‘Old Blush’ itself of 1793. Is this correct? I wish I had a better picture, my old camera was dying. My own plant of bush ‘Old Blush’ came from David Austin’.
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Old Blush
Bred by Unknown Chinese Breeder(s) (China, before 1793).
Discovered by Parsons (United Kingdom, 1793).
Old Blush Climbing
Discovered by Unknown 1752.
Perhaps not quite correct for the climber.
The operative word for the bush is bred BEFORE 1793 (by a few hundred years I believe)
I can only quote Brent Dickerson in The Old Rose Informant p467. The First Eighteen Chinas. "The dates of import, description, and commercial introduction of many of these early roses vie with each other for citation; they are vague and hard to settle, and sometimes might be called somehing of a legal fiction."
Peter Harkness in Modern Gardening Roses' says 'Old Blush' reached Sweden in 1752. I note this is the same date HelpMeFind has for the discovery of the climber.
I would like to be able to help more on the date for the climber, but just do not have the early source materials. Perhaps others can contribute?
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I see, thank you that’s interesting.
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Aren't there Chinese references dating back to the Song dynasty for this rose?
Or at least for something virtually indistinguishable from it.
I remember reading that somewhere, but can't remember where offhand.
Incidentally mine is looking fantastic at the moment. Spring is really agreeing with it this year. Makes wonderful cut flowers too, providing they are cut when just opened.
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