THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN QGUIDE. 233 
fact that it is convenient for nurserymen to send out new roses 
budded on the Italian or the English brier ; we are to consider the 
subject of rese-growing in a broader manner, and we must face the 
fact that the rose will always, if it can, throw up rods from the root, 
and sometimes these rise so far from the original centre, that we 
may really regard the rose as a travelling plant. 
If we look around at the gardens in the suburbs of London, we 
cannot fail to observe that they all contain standard roses, and the 
standard roses are, almost without exception, half-starved, ugly 
things, that are a discredit to the garden and no use to anybody. 
It is always expected of them that they will become beautiful some 
day ; but they never do become beautiful, and in very many cases 
they live only a year or two, and are systematically renewed, and 
the new lot is always expected to do better than the old lot, and 
never realizes the expectation. If it be asked why this should be, 
the answer appears to be close at hand. The brier requires a rich 
deep soil, and if any way treated as capable of enduring starvation, 
resents the insult, and dies outright. The close pruning usually 
adopted, however, is the principal cause of the failure of brier roses, 
for the growth is cut close in, and this checks the action of the root, 
and this results in general debility of both rose and stock, and in 
the hope of making all right at last the brier endeavours to renew 
itself at the root, and in carrying the endeavour into effect throws 
up a lot of suckers, and these are suppressed as fast as they appear. 
Thus restricted at top and restricted at bottom, systematically pre- 
vented acquiring a reasonable degree of vigour, the standard rose 
lives to look like a scarecrow or a bottle-brush, or makes an end of 
the conflict in the arms of death. Then another lot is required, and 
these go through the same melancholy process, and, strange to say, 
this process is dignified by being described as the cultivation of 
roses. 
It will be asked, of course, if any remedy is available for this 
mismanagement of the queen of flowers? There are many remedies, 
and one at least consists in managing standards in a more rational 
way, as, for example, in feeding the root and encouraging the head, 
so that the whole thing, root and branch, shall have some degree of 
health and vigour. One way out of the difficulty is to plant 
own-root roses, which may be allowed to renew themselves at the 
root in accordance with the law of Nature; for however hard 
it may be upon the particular plants, we cannot allow suckers to 
rise from briers of any kind except in very extreme cases where 
briers are wanted, and named roses are considered a nuisance. It 
will be observed, that if smoke affects roses injuriously, the brier is 
in a deplorable fix when planted near a town where smoke prevails, 
because it is not allowed to renew its stem, and therefore the same 
stem must be poisoned by smoke year after year. On the other 
hand, own-root roses suffer no such perpetual poisoning, because 
they throw up fresh rods from time to time, and their old rods may 
be cut out as raspberry canes are; and thus, like the plane-tree, 
they may enjoy some degree of immunity from injury by smoke, in 
consequence of their capability of getting rid of their corroded bark 
August. 
