40 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



CHAPTER VIII 

 CLIMBING ROSES 



MANY species of Rosa are climbers, and gardeners have 

 succeeded in adding to the number by crossing them with 

 each other and with species that are not climbers. The 

 king of climbing Roses is R. gigantea, a native of Upper 

 Burma, and known as a garden plant in Europe for the 

 last twenty-five years. So far it has resisted all attempts to 

 raise a good hybrid from it, at any rate none has been 

 recorded, and it has proved awkward in other ways. That 

 it has qualities of a high order may be seen from the 

 following account of it in Burma : " Rosa gigantea grows 

 in profusion immediately opposite the window I am now 

 writing at, and for a hundred yards or more away. The 

 boles of some of the plants are as thick as a man's thigh. 

 It is a creeper, and does not flower until it gets over or 

 beyond the tree it climbs. These specimens are on large 

 evergreen trees, and their roots are in limestone and vege- 

 table mould, through which run springs of pure water. . . . 

 The whole of a large group of trees on the southern and 

 western side is covered up to fifty and eighty feet in height 

 with the Roses, and when in full bloom they look like a 

 sheet of white, and the air all round is deliciously scented. 

 It is certainly a glorious sight." The flowers are six inches 

 across and milk white. If only we could get Roses with 

 this habit, and as free flowering as the best of our climbing 

 garden sorts are, how useful they would be. 



The most popular climbing Roses to-day are descen- 



