Advertiser (Hurstbridge, Vic. : 1922 - 1939), Friday 5 September 1930, page 8


Are We To Have More Fragrant Roses. (By J.. Horace McFarland in "The Flower Giower," U.S.A. It is admitted, I think, that demand and supply are closely related. to be sure, fashion sets the paceor a pace-in many things, but it is also just as sure that fashion is mightily influenced by tendencies and demands. As I write these words I am wondering just how far fashion, custom, tendencies, and desires, will move .women's skirts up or dowri in the third decade of the twentieth century we are now entering. .It is demand which stirs Rose thybridisers toward producing the things needed, at least to a certain extent. A very considerable group of these hybridisers operate along the lines not directly related to demand, but another group, fortunately, does follow the trend of discussion and desire. In the first category are the British producers, of the larger number of new Hybrid Tea Roses, each year turned loose, on a confiding Rose public. As I look over the liSt of 154 new loses introduced- in 1929, as reportde in the 1930 "American Rose Annual," I find few departures from the standard Hybrid Tea, despite the need for new Hybrid Perpetuals, new Rugosa hybrids, and particularly for new Tea Roses. Every, time I see the splendid old Bourbon Rose, Zephirine Drouhin, bloom, I wonder how the hybridiser can stay away from it, because a white or pink Drouhin would be a desirable thing. (I ought not to forget that Kathleen Harrop did come in as a pink "sport," but it is not of equal vigor with its parent.) Now, if these British hybridisers would reach after Rugosa hybrids and Bourbon hybrids, and would return to the sources from which came many new roses of a generation ago, we would get more variety in our Igardens and better roses, I firmly believe. But the question of fragrance is slowly coming up, and I am hopeful that demand will increase the anxiety of the rose hybridisers to give us fragrance in the new roses. Many who read these words will remember the lack of agreeable fragrance in most of the greenhouse roses, of which our able florists in the United' States produce annually so many millions. The. ideal of fragrance has not been very important to the raisers of these roses, and the handling of them after they are grown usually submerges the natural fragrance of the rose, if it has any, in the fragrance of wet tissue paper and other substances used to pack them. Yet there is. a gleam of hope, or rather a hint of fragrance. Dr. A. A. Stout, a plant physiologist, as well as pathologist, in the New York Botanical Garden, has produced in the last ten years a marvellous race of Day Lilies, about which I wish I might have time and space to write. Right now, however, he is turning his attention toward improving the longneglected Moss Roses, and into that effort he must and will take fragrance of the Moss Rose, a fragrance-peculiar to it, because it arises mostly rom the mossy sepals rather than from the petals of the rose.. When one remembers the beauty of the Moss Rosebud, and then comes to know that not a new Moss Rose' has been produced in angeneration of time, the field in which Dr. Stout will work, seems the more attractive., In rose fragrance there is variety. I well remember how the Tea Rose, ,Cafrano, which was so familiar when I first came to know about it, re

minded me more of tobacco than rose fragrance. Then there was a charruing little rose called Tea Cels, which did have a dainty fragrance characteristic of the class. This year, however, in the review of the new roses grown abroad, printed in the "American Rose Annual," there seems to be a considerable recognition of the need for fragrance, and certain of the newer varieties are described as being "intensely fragrant," or "quite fragrant," instead of just plain ''fragrant," which does not mean much. Scanning the descriptions of these 1929 candidates for cash favor, I note. that of the 29 new roses of the United States, one is just "fragrant" 17 are slightly or moderately fragrant and only three are "intensely fragrant." Great Britain gives us 34 new names, one being "fragrant," ten of the moderate persuasion, and nine claiming "intense, fragrance." France adds 31 new roses, with 12 of them moderately sweet and two of •the "intense" class. 'Thus of these 94 novelties, not quite 60 per' cent. make any claim to fragrance, and 15 per cent. are said to be notably sweet. This, whole matter of rose hybridisation is one about which I wish I might arouse enthusiasm. As I have'. all-too-frequently said, we have taken our rose, fashions from abroad, and our rose varieties as well. We might have varieties. at home, if we wanted to have them, and I cannot think of any more agreeablq happening than that a score or a hundred of rose friends who read these words would undertake to do some hylbridising toward getting fragrant roses in their own gardens. It is not altogether necessary that the new rose be introduced to commerce, and I cannot see' any disadvantage in having some roses private to my own garden. It happens that the 1930 "American Rose Annual" tells a good bit about hybridising possibilities, and includes one man's story of how he has succeeded in thybridising' outdoors at home. I suppose the. apparatus must have cost him as much as 2/6, or less, and he had so much fun that 'he had to tell about it. If, then, there shall be a beginning of home hybridisation looking toward the taking into the product~ of greater fragrance, and if with this there shall be a demand upon the rose merchants for roses th ::t are "intensely" fragrant, we shall all be better off. Few there are who do not know the well-known' Frau Karl Druschki Rose, and who have not 'regretted that, perfect as it is in every other respect, it is scentless. At least a dozen candidates for its rlace have been offered in the last lalf-dozen years, each time with a eight claim for fragrance, but they C, not make good on the vigor, form, beauty and endurance of Peter Lam"I-~rt's masterpiece the old Frau Karl Druschki. -"Garden Lover"