The Rose Amateur's Guide (1863) Page 221-226
Thomas Rivers

‘ LATE-BLOOMING ROSES.’

MY attention all this month of November, and the preceding one of October, has been drawn to a bed of roses, consisting of a score or two of dwarf plants, which have had an unceasing succession of beautiful flowers, far beyond anything I have ever seen in autumn-blooming roses. On looking into them I found them to be a new variety of Hybrid Perpetual Rose called L’Etoile du Nord, which was one of the new roses of 1860, condemned as not being up to my standard, its petals being thin, and the rose, although very large and of a brilliant crimson, seeming an inferior variety of General Jacqueminot, from which one would judge it had been raised. As the treatment of these roses may be of interest, and lead to a new and simple mode of cultivating roses for blooming very late in the season, I will, in a few words, give it.

The original plants were received from France in December 1859, with other new roses, and their shoots taken off in January and grafted on Manetti stocks in the grafting-house, where, of course, artificial heat is employed. They grew well, and bloomed abundantly, in a cool house, in April and May, but, as I have said, their flowers not being thought first-rate, the plants were suffered to remain in small 4-inch pots till the middle of June, and then planted out, not being thought worthy of further pot cultivation. The ground they were planted in was heavily manured, so that they grew very freely, but were not noticed till the beginning of October, when the bed was observed to be a mass of buds and blossoms, the latter quite globular and of extraordinary beauty, and so they have continued to be till this day, the 24th of November. Now this simple fact seems to tell us, that what has resulted from accident may be carried out by rose cultivators, and lead to a method by which our rose gardens may be made more beautiful in autumn than they have yet been.
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CHRISTMAS ROSES

At present I know of only three or four other varieties equal to the above as Christmas roses. These are all varieties with thin petals which in the warm rose-tide of June, soon fade. L’Etoile du Nord is one of the most desirable. This is a new variety, a seedling from General Jacqueminot, which gives its large globular crimson flowers very freely in November and December; their fragrance is then delightful. Triomphe des Beaux Arts and Oriflamme de St. Louis, of the same parentages are also charming winter roses, to which we may add our old favourite General Jacquerninot, which, under the same management, will bloom very nicely. In addition to this valuable quality, I had almost forgotten to add that the flowers of these free-blooming and not very double roses, although almost odourless under the bright sun of June, in winter exhale a delicate and agreeable perfume.