52 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA 



tender in England which thrive best in Madeira. 

 Among the best are the old General Lamarque, 

 which grows rampantly and seems to take care of 

 itself. Its great clusters of snow-white blossoms 

 come in masses in December, and again in April 

 and May. Safrano, Souvenir d'un Ami, Georges 

 Nabonnand, Souvenir de la Malmaison, and Adam, 

 are among the old favourites, though some of the 

 newer kinds of that most beautiful class of roses 

 Hybrid Teas seem to take kindly to the climate. 

 It is useless to attempt to grow any Hybrid 

 Perpetuals : they may bloom fairly well the first 

 year, but never again. I have seen good blooms on 

 many of the Hybrid Teas, such as Antoine Rivoire, 

 Madame Abel Chatenay, and others, though never 

 attaining to the perfection of English roses. Possibly 

 the pruning may be at fault, and if the trees were 

 better pruned, better flowers would be the result ; 

 but their rampant growth makes them, no doubt, 

 difficult to deal with, and it would be a serious under- 

 taking to cut away all the weak wood from the very 

 large bushes, and certainly the ordinary Portuguese 

 gardener makes no attempt to do so. As a rule, he 

 merely clips the trees, shortening back all the 

 growth equally in the month of January. I believe 

 by a careful system of pruning a succession of roses 



