(29 Mar 1975)  Page(s) 38-39.  
 
For the introduction of the original roses which were to have a major influence in the modern development of the genus, western horticulture stands indebted to an English country gentleman, a small and impecunious horticultural society and, linking them both, an employee of the Honourable East India Company based in Canton, China.
Sir Abraham Hume of Wormley Bury, Hertfordshire, was a keen gardener whose wife, Lady Amelia Hume, not only shared his enthusiasm but was an able botanist in her own right. By a happy chance, Sir Abraham's cousin, Alexander Hume, was in charge of the English "factory", or trading post as we should now term it, at Canton. Through Alexander, and more directly, the East India Company's inspector of tea, John Reeves (1778-1856), the Humes had received several consignments of plants during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The consignment of rose plants which Reeves had procured for them from the Fa Tee Nurseries near Canton in 1808 was probably the most important of all.
In those days, when it took almost as many weeks as it now takes in flying hours to reach England from the Far East, it was often the practice to off-load plants in transit from China to England at the Calcutta Botanic Garden as a half-way house for recovery during the long voyage. This practice led the French horticulturists to assume that the plants had actually originated in India and not China. It also confused some English botanists, too, so that to this day, the class of roses which we term the Chinas are referred to in France and Germany as 'Bengales', while the whole botanical Section which includes the Chinas, Tea-scented and Hybrid Teas was given the name INDICAE. It is not known whether the rose plants sent off in 1808 were rested in India, but it is more than a possibility since they did not reach the Humes until 1809, the year in which Lady Amelia died.
Sir Abraham passed plant material to James Colvill, an eminent nurseryman in King's Road, Chelsea, where its first European flowering was recorded in 1810. From its colour and fragrance it was given the name, 'Hume's Blush Tea-scented China'.
The statement by Shepherd, History of the Rose, that "it was not received with great enthusiasm" is not supported by contemporary evidence. It was certainly regarded as sufficiently important for Henry C. Andrews, the foremost English floral artist of his day, to make a plant portrait of it in Colvill's nursery in the same year of its first blooming under the botanical name R. indica odorata. This specific name was probably suggested by Robert Sweet, a gardener-cum-botanist who was employed by Colvill at that time. In any event, when Sweet came to write his own description a few years later, he must have realized the mistaken place ascription as he called the rose R. odorata which has stuck.
Of even greater significance, the following year, at the height of the Napoleonic War, arrangements were made to provide John Kennedy, another famous nurseryman, with a safe-conduct to take 'Hume's Blush' to the Empress Josephine, a fact remarked upon by The Gentleman's Magazine for 14 November 1811. At Malmaison, the greatest botanical artist of all time, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, painted it under the name R. indica fragrans. The plate, first published in 1817 with an accompanying text by the botanist, Claude-Antoine Thory, is by common consent, one of the most beautiful of all the 117 rose portraits published during Redouté's lifetime. It is so well known, having been reproduced on greetings cards, place mats and as a framed engraving, that any further description is superfluous.
Dr C. C. Hurst, writing in 1941, believed 'Hume's Blush' to be extinct. It had, in fact, been collected along with hundreds of other rose species and subspecies by the botanist, Dr Dieck of Zöschen, South Germany, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It formed part of the complete collection exhibited at the World Botanical Congress in Paris in 1908 and was then planted in the Rosarium at Sangerhausen where it has remained ever since. Through the generosity of Herr Hans Vonholdt, the Curator, plant material has been made available to me. The plants display when in young growth the lovely purple-red wood and foliage so characteristic of their descendants while the somewhat sprawling habit is found among several of the early hybrids still in cultivation.

(29 Mar 1975)  Page(s) 39.  
 
At this same time, Joseph Sabine, Secretary of the Horticultural Society of London, now the Royal Horticultural Society, was busy arousing the interest of the Society's Council in the garden value of chrysanthemums, which had been first introduced to this country in 1790 from France, although they had originated in China and Korea. Sabine's appetite had been whetted by forty or so Chinese paintings sent to the Society by John Reeves. Evidently Sabine's enthusiasm was infectious, for despite a deficit £1200 (an enormous sum in those days), the Society decided to send out to China a young gardener in their employ, John Damper Parks, with instructions "to collect among other specimens, as many good varieties of Chrysanthemum as possible."
Parks set out in 1823, met Reeves and was full of praise for the kindness and advice the experienced plantsman offered. In 1824 he returned with sixteen new varieties of chrysanthemum, which must have pleased Sabine mightily, the first aspidistra to be seen in Europe, the yellow form of the Banksian Rose, R. banksiae lutea and most importantly for the future development of roses, a yellow form of the Tea Rose which was given the name 'Parks' Yellow Tea-scented China'. John Lindley, then the Assistant Secretary of the Society's garden, with a delightful disregard of mixing the two Classical languages, assigned it the botanical name R. odorata ochroleuca. There is not much doubt that Lindley was prompted to discard the Latin flavescens, meaning "yellow" in favour of the Greek word meaning "yellowish-white" as being closer to the colour of the blooms.
'Parks' Yellow' was sent by Lindley to Eugene Hardy, Keeper of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris in 1825 and it quickly became a very popular pot plant. Thomas Rivers records seeing hundreds of plants in the Paris markets "gaily wrapped in coloured paper so that the spending of a franc on such a pretty object is hard to resist". According to Hurst, no living material has been available since 1882. Recent searches, alas, confirm his statement. (It may, of course, still exist in China but that possibility has not been explored.)

(29 Mar 1975)  Page(s) 39.  
 
At this same time, Joseph Sabine, Secretary of the Horticultural Society of London, now the Royal Horticultural Society, was busy arousing the interest of the Society's Council in the garden value of chrysanthemums, which had been first introduced to this country in 1790 from France, although they had originated in China and Korea. Sabine's appetite had been whetted by forty or so Chinese paintings sent to the Society by John Reeves. Evidently Sabine's enthusiasm was infectious, for despite a deficit £1200 (an enormous sum in those days), the Society decided to send out to China a young gardener in their employ, John Damper Parks, with instructions "to collect among other specimens, as many good varieties of Chrysanthemum as possible."
Parks set out in 1823, met Reeves and was full of praise for the kindness and advice the experienced plantsman offered. In 1824 he returned with sixteen new varieties of chrysanthemum, which must have pleased Sabine mightily, the first aspidistra to be seen in Europe, the yellow form of the Banksian Rose, R. banksiae lutea and most importantly for the future development of roses, a yellow form of the Tea Rose which was given the name 'Parks' Yellow Tea-scented China'.