ROSE LETTER August 2014 Vol. 38, No.3 ROSE LETTER of The Heritage Roses Groups © Editor: Darrell g.h. Schramm [email protected] 101 Benson Ave., Vallejo, CA 94590 Publisher: Jeri & Clay Jennings Vol. 38., No. 3 CONTENTS Not Set in Stone: Rosa Spithamea . 2 The Name of the Rose!! . 5 Nevada City"s Pine Grove Cemetery . 6 The Roses of Joseph Banks! . 11 The Fifth Annual Rose Lover"s Gathering . 20 Celebrating the Celebration of Old Roses . 21 Mottisfont Rose Conference! . 24 Just a Few Old Roses: Chelsea Physic Garden. 27 Cover and Photo Credits!! . 10 National Officers of Heritage Roses Groups Acting Convener: Jeri Jennings - [email protected] Membership Chair: Clay Jennings - [email protected] Secretary-Treasurer: Alice Flores - [email protected] Board Members at Large Barbara Oliva, Honorary Member - [email protected] William Grant - [email protected] Pam Greenewald - [email protected] Jill Perry - [email protected] Darrell g.h. Schramm - [email protected] 1 Rosa spithamea Not Set in Stone: Rosa Spithamea Darrell g.h. Schramm The state of California is home to nine species of wild roses. Or only six or seven if, according to some experts, two or three are really subspecies of Rosa gymnocarpa. Of the nine—Rosas californica, minutifolia, nutkana, pisocarpa, woodsii, gymnocarpa, pinetorum, bridgesii, and spithamea—the latter three may be related to R. gymnocarpa, but further analysis has yet to establish that as fact. It is, however, R. spithameas that seems the least studied and addressed. Rosa spithamea, also called the California “Ground Rose,” (though that nickname could apply equally to R. bridgesii and R. pinetorum) grows in scrub oak and chaparral country from northern Monterey and southern San Luis Obispo counties in the 2 central western to northwestern parts of the state. Near where I live, I have seen it on Ring Mountain above Corte Madera in Marin County and in the hills of Swett Ranch Open Space, a few miles east of Vallejo along the Pacific Ridge Trail in Solano County. In the latter location I have studied it for three years now. As its name suggests, it is a low growing rose, no more than twelve inches tall. Most of what grows out of a rocky bank immediately below a stand of oak trees where I observe it is no more than a span—six inches high (spithama is Latin for “handspan”). Sometimes among filaree, ferny achillea leaves, wild mint, poison oak, and other understory vegetation, the dwarf plants can be hard at first to spot, especially when not in flower. Reportedly it blooms with some enthusiasm after a fire, but otherwise it proclaims itself as a reluctant or stingy bloomer. However, in Oregon’s southern Cascades on the south flank of Abbott Butte, hundreds of blossoms have been observed ankle- deep. Indeed, my experience has been that, compared to California’s shot glass, Oregon’s botanical cup runneth over. Rosa spithamea produces single blossoms, lightly scented, of a medium pink (in other locales it may be deep rose or even merely a blush), the size of a quarter or slightly larger. While old grey stems generally display no prickles, the younger green stems bear prickles and bristles that are dark, fine, and essentially straight. Infrastipular spines are not uncommon. Leaves consist of five, seven, and nine leaflets, but mostly seven. They are sessile and broadly serrate, ovate when young, more rounded when mature. Like raised wings, the first set of leaflets below the apical leaflet point upward. Stipules are glandular-ciliate (i.e., with tiny hairy glands), auricles widespread. The receptacle is distinctive: densely pilose, that is, covered with straight glandular hairs. Underground suckering roots can make it slowly pervasive. If one looked at the five pink petals alone, the flower might easily be mistaken for nearly any other California wild rose. But location aside, we can distinguish a few traits from some of the others. R. gymnocarpa, not a crawler, tends to grow erect and even as tall as four feet, generally in part shade beneath redwood or oak trees. It also drops its ovate sepals and, unlike R. spithamea, exudes a strong fragrance. 3 Rosa pinetorum, on the other hand, found under Monterey pines, bears a glabrous receptacle, that is, one without hairs. And R. bridgesii exhibits few prickles and produces roses only in small clusters of two or more and stipules that are ciliate, i.e., with distinct hairs or glands. According to botanist Barbara Ertter, it appears to grow no hips. Could Rosas spithamea, pinetorum, and bridgesii, all three ground roses and genetically tetraploid, be subspecies of R. gymnocarpa, a diploid? Possibly. According to rose species authority Cassandra Bernstein, “Widely distributed diploid plant species that spread into extreme environments”— and R. gymnocarpa can be found from the understory of redwoods to the understory of oaks, from the Sierra Nevada foothills to the Pacific coast Rosa spithamea —“have been known to mutate, evolve, or hybridize into different ploidies than those commonly reported.” Surely, then, the three ground rose species may be the same rose whose ecogeographic variations have created variations in the species. If botanist Daniel Chamovitz is correct that environmental stress in a plant seems to cause “a heritable change that is passed on to successive generations,” then one or more of these California species could be morphologically one with R. gymnocarpa. Small variations in a species may be the result of environmental stress— drought, severe rainfall, fire, pestilence, salt in air or soil. In fact, claims Chamovitz, “different environmental insults increase the frequency of genomic rearrangements” in plants of both parental and second generations, the latter showing further genetic alteration but more tolerance to stress, often proving themselves more hardy or vigorous in harsh environmental situations. 4 One could then, without DNA evidence, draw the conclusion that to speak or write of the varieties of R. spithamea is to nick-pick or to split hairs. Whether in one county its prickles are broader at the base and in another its prickles are nearly absent, these may be mere environmental distinctions, not characteristics that identify and define this span-high ground rose. And whether it is a subspecies of R. gymnocarpa or a species in its own right, Rosa spithamea is variable. Though it can be found growing from rocky outcrops, it—like many species—is not set in stone. THE NAME OF THE ROSE Why is it sometimes so difficult to determine the name of a mystery rose? As far back as 1827 the famed rose breeder Jean- Pierre Vibert gave one reason (and there are others). Even then there abounded “charlatans,” he wrote, who were “obnoxious to the progress of horticulture.” He went on to declare, “It pains me to state that the French are like that; they travel through several counties in England, selling at great profit some so-called novelties, and fooling the public by every means possible.” The same rose would be sold under different names in each county the nursery- men passed through. Stephen Scaniello, president of the Heritage Rose Founda- tion adds a more specific instance: “In 1842, American nursery- men suspected that two popular red China roses imported from France--’Agrippina’ and ‘Cramoisi Superieur’--were identical. After much debate and heated correspondence among the nurserymen, it was finally determined that the same plant was shipped to the United States under two different names. The discovery cleared the air but forever left open the question of which name was correct.” Sometimes a rose disappears from nursery lists and gardens, as did our cover rose ‘Slater’s Crimson China’ in the late 1800s. In the late 1900s a red rose named “Belfield” was found in Bermuda; it seemed to match descriptions and illustrations of Slater’s rose, but despite some DNA studies, the verdict is still out. Some mysteries remain unsolved. 5 Nevada City’s Pine Grove Cemetery: Revisiting Old Survivors Rose curators, Kathy Hammes, Joy Feller and Kathy Granlund. As many members may recall, Pine Grove is a cemetery in which two adventuresome women set about to replant the Masonic section in the style of a Victorian cemetery garden with the primary focus on old historic roses. Here we are five years later, and as I stand in the cemetery on this Memorial Day, the scope of the bloom is staggering. To be able to see and experience the roses that many of those who now reside beneath me knew in their lifetimes is very humbling. But for all the rose classes that we have reintroduced into the cemetery, perhaps it is fitting that more should be mentioned of the original group that were here when we began and, unfortunately, some of the few that have passed on. Blanchefleur ‘Blanchefleur’, Centifolia,1835: It appears we have several plants of this rose in the cemetery. One was a purchase made at the 6 open garden sale in Sacramento a few years ago, and that rose graces the Naffziger family plot. The next one Joy and I obtained from underneath a sidewalk in front of an old house on Race Street in Grass Valley. The house has since been sold and all trace of the rose is gone. Finally, on a rustle to the Clear Creek cemetery, we got a slip of a rose fighting for its life growing under a live oak. All three bloomed at the same time and were wonderful ‘Blanchefleur’. Such a powder fresh fragrance! ‘Alba odorata’, hybrid bracteata: This rose knows no bounds as it has surrounded the Beckman plot and challenges us to contain it. Here it is the last rose to bloom, and the deer have never been able to restrain the growth of this vigorous rose either.