CULTURE OF DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF ROSES. 61 



newe yeere bringeth with it newe and strange kindes, and euery 

 countrey his peculiar plants of this sorte, which are sent vnto vs from 

 farre countries, in hope to receive from vs such as our countrie 

 yeeldeth." 



CULTURE OF DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF ROSES. 



BT ROSA. 



In the many excellent observations, on the cultivation of the rose 

 which have appeared, I have frequently observed that the rules, though 

 most excellent in themselves, as applied to many species of roses, have 

 usually been too general, and have proceeded on the principle of con- 

 sidering most species as requiring the same modes of treatment, while 

 the great difference in the habits, nature, places and manner of growth, 

 seem to me to point out important variations in the soil, situation, and 

 mode of cultivation required by many of the different species. I 

 therefore would state some of the differences and places of growth, in a 

 wild state, of some of the species, and the variations they seem to 

 suggest in the culture. Though plants are greatly altered by culture 

 yet they generally retain a considerable bias to the soil and situation 

 for which, by nature, they are formed ; and it is usually within a 

 certain range only, of what I would call then 1 natural habits, that they 

 are capable of improvement by cultivation. 



In taking a cursory view of the difference which there appears to me 

 to be among some of the species of roses, I shall, to make myself 

 better understood, separate the genus into five divisions. 



In the first division I place Rosa spinosissima and its varieties, 

 the R. lutea, sulphurea, and cinnamomea which, from their slender 

 shoots, small and numerous thorns, and fibrous roots growing very near 

 the surface of the ground, are all, I believe, plants in their wild state 

 growing upon heaths and places where there is but little depth of soil, 

 and are surrounded only by plants of a low stature ; they would seem 

 therefore to require to be planted in an airy situation, and not to need 

 much depth of soil, as in their natural places of growth they are ex- 

 posed to the browsing of cattle, and we find them to bear much cutting 

 and shortening of their shoots. 



In the second division I include the numerous varieties of Rosa 

 provincialis, centifolia, gallica and muscosa. The varieties of these 

 species are so numerous that this division contains the greatest number 

 as well as many of the most beautiful roses ; they appear to me to be 

 plants which, judging from their manner of growth, have in their 

 natural situations to contend with high grasses and other strong grow- 

 ing perennial plants ; when overpowered by these they, as it were, 

 remove by sending out roots near the surface of the ground which, 

 when they reach a more airy spot, throw up suckers, these exhaust the 

 old plant, and form a new one in a better situation ; the roots of this 

 division, though less fibrous than those of the first, yet are so much so, 

 and grow so near the surface of the ground, as not to require either a 

 strong or deep soil. 



