Re: Roses
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Re: Roses
- From: A* V* <p*@librs6k.vatlib.it>
- Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 12:06:27 GMT
At 11:31 AM 3/15/99 -0800, Morgan Conrad wrote:
Picked up two climbers, "Dublin Bay" and
>"Lavender Lassie", and one Rugosa with a long French name, "Blanc Double de
>something or other".
It must be "Blanc double de Coubert" - a wonderful rugosa with double white,
wonderfully scented flowers.
It is continuos flowering, like many rugosas, specially if you water in the
Summer; if you don't it will have an abundant second bloom in the Fall.
Unfortunately this does not set the lovely, apple-like hips typical of the
other rugosas, so if you want to have them, you should plant close by the
species, or Rugosa Alba, or any of the other fruiting vars. (like the
beautiful Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, silver pink, or Frau Dagmar Hastrupp,
deep pink).
Talking about roses... I just wanted to sing the praise of R. Bracteata,
which is a not very common, giant species, I think form China (but I should
check). It can be a climber or a shrub: if you don't give it any support it
will self sustain after a while. As a climber it can reach about 9 mt (30
ft). It is reliable, totally evergreen, has single white flowers with a
cluster of golden stamens, virtually all summer long. It makes an ideal
hedge and a perfect screen for unsighty big objects. Bracteata is one of the
parents of the much too praised Mermaid that in this climate is quite
disappointing in that it makes too much growth and foliage and too scarce
flowers.
Hadn't spring arrived? In three days the temps dropped about 10 degrees
Celsius, and it started to snow on the hills once more! Most of my fruit
trees were blooming, and they dropped all their flowers.
>From a very windy Rome,
Alessandra
