Rose is a Rose
COLLINS GUIDE TO ROSES. By Bertram Park. (Collins, 25s.)
PERSONS adventurous enough to have met Miss Gertrude Stein (for it was something of an experience), or to have engaged in correspondence with her, will remember the device or motto that she invented for herself, 'a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,' a rebus which she had printed in a circle on her writing- paper. And as on many other improbable topics, big and small, she wrote down gibberish but conveyed sense. For a rose is a rose, and in its own kingdom, on wall or in the flower-bed, there is nothing more beautiful in the world. Also, it offers more to choose from than in any other flower. And here, at last, among
a plethora of rose-books is one which is written, fully and calmly, With a cool head. It is the first of a new Garden Guides series Published by Messrs. Collins at a fantastically low price when we consider that it has no fewer than sixty-four plates in colour. Most are colour photographs, but sixteen of them are paintings, and although far removed from works of art they show each flower in recognisable detail and for that reason are of use. After Mr. Bertram Park has finished there is little left to say on roses, Yet certain notes and comments come to mind.
This is the first time in any book intended for the larger public that a writer on roses has dealt fairly with both old and new. Usually the faults of the one are blamed upon the other. His chapter on scent is perhaps too brief, for that, after all, is the Prime and favourite quality of a rose. And in his effort to deny that modern roses have lost their fragrance he does not do justice to the heavenly armament of the older flowers. Queen of Den- mark, the Rose a feuilles de laitue, Reine des Centfeuilles, and how many others, offer a wider choice of scent, which is expressed and inherent in a softer texture than the modern rose. Also, surely, there is a more extended variety in their shape and form. 4me Legras de St. Germain, or General Kleber, or Mme Roche Lambert, or Marechal Davoust, or Charles de Mills, all of these and so many more have a distinction in appearance that Puts them apart. After them, lovely as those may be, one cannot look for beauty among the floribundas or the hybrid teas. Who, knowing the other, would compare for a moment Pink Grooten- dorst, which is scentless, with the real dianthiflora or carnation rose? But, of course, the short flowering season of the older roses Is their drawback.
The detriment of the newer roses is that their obvious and undeniable qualities are not governed by taste. It is in that respect that the older roses point the way. For an instance, Peace, the Most famous and popular of modern roses, of which Mr. Bertram Park tells us an estimated two million plants were sold and Vowing in the gardens of the world in 1953, is large and flaunting
and in its fashion something of a miracle, as are all flowers, but where is its finish and where its scent? Mere size is not enough; nor are an ice-cream colour and texture all that a rose can do. So many more as well as Peace are roses of the Riviera, bred on the COte d'Azur. Their breeders, choosing and rejecting among thousands, are looking for certain qualities which win prizes, but what is lacking is an artist's hand. We have only to compare irises bred by Sir Cedric Morris with the huge irises that are the rage across the Atlantic in order to be certain in our minds that this is true. Their taste is no surer than that of the Dutch bulb- growers who have brought a vulgar monotony 'into the tulip and could spoil the daffodil with their heavy hands. Do the Riviera roses.,even suit the background of an English garden? We may think the French roses were better matched to our gardens when they were grown in other parts of France.
In the future there will surely be a return to scent, and perhaps no rose will sell that is not scented. As to other likelihoods there is a perpetual search for the blue rose. When secured, will it be a rose that is hardly a rose at all, and as altered and distorted from the type as are many of the dogs that win prizes at a dog show? What will the blue rose be? A curious and possible step in its direction seems to have escaped notice. The American travel- ler and big-game shot Mr. Suydan Cutting in his book The Fire- Ox, a most interesting account of journeys in Tibet and Chinese Turkestan, gives the odd information that in Ladakh, a little state in India on the border of Tibet, with a Buddhist population, he saw sky-blue roses growing. It has been suggested that what he saw were blue poppies. But Mr. Cutting told the present writer that they were growing in the hedges like wild roses, and that he brought roots of them back for a botanical garden in the United States, where they never flowered. If there is a parentage here for the blue rose of the future this would be something other in the result than McGredy's Lilac Time, or Lavender Pinocchio. Surely it should be possible for this sky-blue rose to be found and flown back for investigation. Here, of course, understanding nothing of genes or chromo- somes, one treads on dangerous ground. In the meantime, and in ignorance, could not scent be put into the yellow rose? And, as an incident, Mr. Bertram Park says of Niphetos, a white tea- rose, that it is 'large, full, globular, and very fragrant.' Here, where it grows in an old conservatory, it has no scent at all. But this is one of the very few misstatements which the writer, only a rose amateur, can discover in one of the most professional books ever written on the rose. It is a huge compendium of information set down in handy form. For its size, and price, this book should be on the shelf in every rose-home. SACHEVERELL SITWELL
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