THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 



THE ROSE IN AMERICA 



By J. Horace McFarland 



Lecture held at American Museum of Natural History, 

 Thursday, Jan. nth, 1923 



(Mr. Leonard Barron, presiding.) 



THE Rose is distinctly a world plant, in evidence in many 

 species all over the Temperate Zone. It is natural in America, 

 where the "wild" Roses are in many species, varying in the estima- 

 tion of botanists from as few as thirty to more than a hundred. 

 Yet we know little of it from the standpoint of the natives. 



The Rose is the oldest cultivated plant, having been named "the 

 Queen of Flowers," tradition says, in Athens nearly twenty-six 

 hundred years ago. It has impressed itself on the world's lan- 

 guages so that the same sound virtually will bring the rose reaction 

 in English, French, German, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, Portu- 

 guese, Spanish, Russian, Latin, Swedish, Dutch and Bohemian. 



America is awakening to the Rose, as may be judged in the 

 statement that practically ten million of Rose plants were sold 

 within the limits of the United States in 1922, and more than a 

 hundred millions of cut Roses did their beautiful duty. Neverthe- 

 less, we have taken our Rose fashions from abroad, the most of 

 the varieties current being European in their origin and raised 

 from European and Asiatic natives. Of 588 varieties deemed 

 worthy in the last official catalogue of the National Rose Society 

 of England, but 26 are of xA.merican origin. Of 497 Roses origin- 

 ated in America since George Washington's time, as set forth in 

 "The American Rose Annual for 1922," barely one hundred are 

 yet in commerce, and while 140 new Roses were introduced in all 

 the world last year, but 5 were of American origination. 



Our hybridizers, however, are now at work. In the field of 

 greenhouse Roses, Messrs, Hill, Montgomery, Towill, Clark, Dun- 

 lap and Scott have been, doing wonderful things, while the 

 achievements of the two lamented members of the American Rose 

 Society, M. H. Walsh of Woods Hole, Mass., and Dr. W. Van 



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