326 THE FLORIST. 



ROSES, OLD AND NEW. 



Roses, what a theme ! What beautiful things to look at, to talk about, 

 to write about, to smell, to cultivate. Would that Dickens were a 

 lover of Roses, so that we could have a monthly article on their num- 

 berless attractions. Alas ! Rose growers have not poetry enough in 

 their composition to write poetically about such flowers ; and so I will 

 be prosy, and talk first about old Roses, and yet not the oldest. I 

 wonder if any of your readers remember the " two thousand varieties " 

 cultivated some thirty or forty years ago by the Messrs. Loddiges at the 

 Hackney Nursery. I do, and also perfectly recollect my surprise on 

 hearing so many euphonious French names applied to Roses appearing 

 nearly all alike ; for most of them were varieties of Rosa gallica, with 

 very slight shades of difference. Soon after this time some lions made 

 their appearance, and the Celestial Rose, with its delicate blush tint, 

 and the Tuscany, with its dark velvety crimson, each sold at one 

 guinea, made a great noise in the Rose world. Soon after this the 

 George the Fourth attained great popularity, and it is still a fine dark 

 Rose ; this. Brown's Superb Blush, and the Wellington, were the first 

 of the race of Hybrid China Roses, which for some years were so 

 popular. It was somewhere about this time that the pretty Noisette 

 Rose was introduced from France, and I perfectly well remember how 

 delighted I was on budding it on standards of the Rosa villosa, called 

 here at that time the " Double Apple Bearing Rose," to find it form 

 fine heads, and bloom most abundantly. By the way, this Apple- 

 bearing Rose, and the Double Sweet Briar, were at, or a little before, 

 the time I am writing about, the only standard Roses in our gardens. 

 I recollect one very old standard of the former which grew in the 

 " front court " here, that measured some sixteen or eighteen inches in 

 circumference of stem, with a large umbrageous head like an orchard 

 Apple tree of twenty years' growth ; a heavy fall of snow towards the 

 end of one October, before it had shed its leaves, crushed and ruined it. 

 To return to my standard Noisette Roses : I was never tired of admiring 

 them. To see standard Roses blooming in autumn was something wonder- 

 ful. It was, I think, this same autumn that I visited the nursery of 

 Messrs. Lee and Kennedy, and there I saw, to my intense admiration, 

 standards of Rosa multiflora. Tea Roses, Moss Roses, and a host of 

 others, mostly summer Roses. These I was told were imported from 

 France ; their price was one guinea each. I thought them very cheap, 

 for they appeared to my young eyes rich and rare beyond everything 

 I had ever seen. Soon alter this the Rose du Roi, or Crimson Per- 

 petual, or Lee's Perpetual, made its appearance, and also the Palmyra 

 or Blush Perpetual. How they were sought afl:er ! for a sweet-smelling 

 Rose blooming in autumn was a prize. Many other Perpetual Roses, 

 so called, were then brought into notice, and then in due course came 

 Madame LafFay, raised by M. Laffay, one of the first and still one of 

 the best of the Hybrid Perpetuals. Soon after this M. Laffay " gained," 

 as they say in France, Prince Albert ; this he thought a masterpiece, 

 and accordingly, relying upon its name and quality to give it great 



