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Margaret, yes, perhaps. We don't know at this point. We DO have Rosa minutifolia as an example of something that is adapted to the waterless medit conditions. But like I said, I didn't care for the plant. Some also say minutifolia is only adapted to the coolth of the coast---I'm not sure about that. I had a few plants in full sun in Pomona, which is many miles inland.

In the French and Italian Riviera, commercial Tea roses were not watered in summer. Granted, the climate is more rainy than southern California and South Australia. Gertrude Jekyll, in Roses for English Gardens : Roses in English Gardens on the Riviera: "Tea Roses, which not only bear but enjoy the summer heat and drought, flowering freely in November and December after the autumn rains and pruning, are cultivated
not only in gardens, but as a field crop, and the December crop of bloom is the most
valuable, so that everything yields to that."

Henry Bennet, the breeder of Mrs. John Laing, wrote an interesting article, The Resting of Roses by Drought and Heat on the Genoese Riviera, in "The Gardeners' chronicle : a weekly illustrated journal of horticulture and allied subjects" in 1881: "In warm
and dry climates, such as that of the Genoese Riviera,
it loses all but a few terminal leaves when the dry
heat of summer begins, remains alive but dormant,
and only awakens to life and to growth when the
autumn rains reach the roots ; instantly the leaves and
buds burst forth, and in about six weeks it flowers
freely, though not as freely as in spring.

It is this fact that forcibly struck Mr. Paul, and
with a perspicacity that honours him he saw at once
that the Mentone climate could be imitated, and he
has succeeded, it appears, in producing identical
results. After the spring flowering he put a lot of
Tea Roses in a stove, leaving them all but without
water for two months, in gentle heat, thereby securing
the Mentone rest ; he then watered them in a cooler
temperature, with the result Mr. Fish describes.............In a recent
number of the Gardeners^ Chronicle Mr. Fish, in
giving an account of the floral e.xhibition at Manches-
ter, spoke in glowing terms of Mr. George Paul's Tea
Roses in pots. It appears that they were in vigorous
health, covered with bloom ; and Mr. Fish states that
Mr. Paul's great success in thus blooming Tea Roses
in the autumn constitutes quite a new era in Rose
culture."


Thanks, Nate