312 



JOURNAL OF HORTIOULTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENEK. 



(May i, 1876. 



Hereford, and Mr. Harrison of Derlin^ton, an! one or two 

 others had really taken the Manetti stock up or given it a 

 fair trial, so one perforce had to buy some on the Briar. But 

 1860 was a facer— or rather I ought, 1 believe, to say Christ- 

 mas eve of 18.39, when the thermometer about here conld 

 record zero, and the mercury retired into the bulb and refused 

 to appear. One of my minimum bulbs conld register to — 5°, 

 and this a spirit thermometer recorded — 4° in the morning ; 

 but as it was — 3' at eight o'clock Christmas day I am in- 

 clined to think it was really lower. Near here one record four 

 miles off was — 8", another — 10', and Mr. May of Bedale 

 assured me his miDimnm, a pood glass he depended on, regis- 

 tered — 12". I know in the Dukeries ia Notts and along the 

 valley of the Trent the records varied from zero to — 10°. 

 However, this is somewhat of a digression and repeating a 

 twice-told tale, but the moral of it— if frost can be said to 

 have a moral — was this : that Roses on standards had their 

 heads exposed to all the severity of the frost without pro- 

 tection of enow or mother earth were as a rule entirely 

 killed — not only the Rose, but tho stem of the Briar as well. 

 Some persons have argued in favour of the hardiness of the 

 Briar as being an indigenous plant, but I can assure them in 

 every hedgerow about here the old Briar — yes, and the young 

 ones too, were killed down to the ground, so that ia the sum- 

 mer of 18C0 there was not a Dog Rose to be seen in the hedges ; 

 while a lot of old Manetti stocks of mine never suffered appa- 

 rently at all, though they had shoots 4 or 5 feet long unpruned 

 and untouched. The argument that because a tree, or plant, 

 or shrub is indigenous that it is therefore hardy is, in my 

 mind, quite fallacious. Who has not seen a healthy bed of 

 Nettles cut-down by a spring frost, while a bed of seedling 

 Pansies or Auriculas has come off unscathed ? Even the lordly 

 Oak was killed by this same frost, and in the nf-ighbourhood 

 of Howsham, near the river Derwent, branches of large Oak 

 trees two and three hundred years old split with a sound like 

 the firing of distant guns. 



Having been, as a Torkphireman would say, very full against 

 standards even before 18o9-G0-winter, my experience of that 

 season made me determined not only never to plant another 

 myself, but never to advise others to do so, and never to bud 

 another Briar. I had a dozen standard Roses once sent me as 

 a present from abroad, and I have had, when ordering Roses 

 on Manetti, a few half-standard Tea and Noisettes sent me 

 on dwarf Briar stocks ; but though they were planted in the 

 same beds with those on Manetti and have had the same treat- 

 ment I do not think I have a single E ise alive now on even a 

 dwarf Briar stock. I certainly have a dozen doing well, espe- 

 cially three or four so-called Teas on the seedling Briar, but 

 then I have buried the junction, and I believe they have made 

 their own roots ; and the only crown, which is on a level with 

 the ground, is pushing np a healthy crop of suckers of the true 

 Dog-Eose tjps, several of which I had to cut off last year, and 

 some half-dozen of which I saw appearing again yesterday. 

 I said so-called Tea Roses, for I do not assent to Gloire de 

 Dijon, Belle Lyonnaise, and that type being eaU-'d Teas ; the 

 wood, growth, and young shoots are entirely distinct from the 

 true Teas and are of the Bourbon type, with possibly sufficient 

 Tea blood to give them their scent and second-blooming quali- 

 ties ; but compare Gloire de D jon with Souvenir d'un Ami, or 

 Nipbetos, or Adam, and then compare Marechal Kiel (a Tea- 

 scented Noisette) with the old R isa odorata citriodora, and it 

 will be found that the Tea-scented Noisettes are nearer to the 

 true Teas than the Gloire de Dijon and its congeners. I am 

 inclined to think, then, that why seedling Briars are such 

 good stocks for some of the so-ealled Teas is that they even- 

 tually get established on their own roots. And here I seem 

 not to be in accord with Mr. Camm, who strongly advises no 

 one to trouble themselves about Roses on. heir own roots. 

 But the fact is there are some of the stronger-growing Roses — 

 especially such is Gloire de Dijon, Celine Forestier, General 

 Jacqueminot, John Hopper, and some of the older Bourbons, 

 Noisettes, &a. — which if once established on their own roots 

 will make far finer growth and bloom from their own roots 

 than from any stock; but, then, notbiog but trial and selec- 

 tion, except perhaps observation of the natural habit of wood 

 and growth, will enable one to judge which sorts will do on 

 their own roots, and it takes far longer to establish them. To 

 try and grow such plants as Maria Biumann or Louis Van 

 Hontte, and Mdlle. Bonnaiie on their own roots woald be simply 

 fntil€ — so much waste labour ; so that I quite agree with our 

 enthusiastic rosarian when he says, " Don't burn your fingers 

 and waste yonrtime over growing Roses from cuttings on their 



own roots unless you have plenty of natural discretion and 

 observation, and have, moreover, a good, rich, light loam, not 

 too heavy, not again too blow-away ; but if you have either a 

 heavy clay or a soil like that of Monkton Wyld, a sample which 

 was sent some two years ago by the Editors to analyse, I say 

 advisedly. Don't fash yourself." I give Mr. Camm every credit 

 after the sample of soil which I had then submitted to me for 

 the great success he has had, but I am not surprised that the 

 Briar has proved a broken reed. 



Now I know some rosarian from a real heavy clay or an 

 nnotnons loam, who has taken pains to get good clean Briars 

 with a fair modicum of root, and has budded them himself 

 and duly attended to them, will say, " All nonsense : nothing 

 like a good Briar." (By the way, ought it to be Brier or Briar ?) 

 But then all soils are not heavy clay or unctuous loam ; be- 

 sides, most persons think more of having good Roses to last 

 when planted than of the first blooms from a quarter of maiden 

 Briars. Granted under certain very favourable conditions of 

 soil, climate — autumn, winter, and spring — when you have 

 caught your season and carefully budded a quarter of care- 

 fully selected Dog Roses, not real old stumps which would 

 do for Dur-and-spell, but good, vigorous, young plants carefully 

 transplanted, not cut out of hedgerows with a narrow sharp 

 draining tool as I have seen them. Granted, as I say, that 

 under very favourable conditions the firet-year blooms from 

 a quarter of maiden Briars will repay a great deal of labour 

 and many disappointments, yet for general purposes the Dog 

 Rose is so uncertain a stock that I hope before long we shall 

 see no more mop-shaped Roses on long poles. 



I have before now given my reasons why the Rosea on hedge- 

 row Briars must suffer. Firstly, the labourers who take them 

 out of the hedgerows, and have so much the dozen or hundred 

 for them, take no pains about pulling them up. Next, when 

 taken up they are often thrown in heaps together in a thed or 

 put in by the heels till sufficient in number to make a deal 

 with the nearest nurserymen. I do not, of course, mean to 

 say that all nurserymen procure their standards in this way. 

 Then when they are planted in rows in the nurseries a certain 

 proportion — 1 wo'n't say how many, but I believe I should not 

 be far wrong if I said twenty per cent. — die, or rather never 

 live. The others push their shoots, some pretty strongly, 

 others feebly, but every one that lives is budded and has to 

 take its chance. A certain proportion of the buds fail, and the 

 stocks die away after pushing their first growth. All that live 

 and on which the buds grow are sent out as standard Eoeos, 

 or dwarfs or half-standards as the case maybe, according to 

 the original height of the Briar or the height at which they 

 broke ; so two years after they were pulled out of the hedge- 

 rows and planted in the nurseries they are again removed 

 from their nursery quarters and sent out to the Biitish public. 

 This second transplanting either kills or cripples half that 

 survive the previous processes and reach the hands of Rose- 

 loving John Bull. And then comes another point. Ordinary 

 garden soil, such as sandy or light loam, or peaty soil or leaf 

 soil, does not suit the Bnar; it requires something more heavy 

 and tenacious. Good farmyard (shall I write the word ?) muck 

 with house sewage, Ac, may make a poor soil fitter, but it 

 wo'n't turn a brashy, sandy, or gravelly soil into a fit home 

 for a Briar. 



This is rather like a sailor's yarn, somewhat long and epnn 

 out. But I have yet another indictment against the Briar as 

 a stock, one I have made before some time ago, but which I 

 venture to repeat, and that is that it is contrary to the nature 

 of the Rose to prune it to tbe form which it ia almost necessary 

 to do to keep it as a mop-headed standard. 



A Dog Rose naturally recuperates itself each year from the 

 root ; its nature, its habit, is to throw np suckers. Look at 

 a good establithed wild Rose in a hedge — you will find every 

 year it pushes up strong shoots from its very base, making 

 shoots each year stronger than the year before, till it begins to 

 be past the age of vigour and begins to decline towards the 

 period of decrepitude. This, however, is its habit, and 

 standards are always trying to throw-up suckers, and Rose- 

 growers have to be perpetually on the guard against them. 

 Pruning to a symmetrical head may give an eqnal distribntion 

 of blooms over the plant — a good show, in short, of garden 

 Roses for distant t fleet; but rarely, if ever, will a really good 

 exhibition bloom be cut from a Etandard, half-standard, or 

 dwarf after the third season. 



Roses on seedling Briars are not liable to the same objec- 

 tions. First, because the roots are cared for — are not mutilated 

 at transplanting, and are young and vigorous. Secondly, the 



