224 COME INTO THE GARDEN 



vary however, quite as much as the races of 

 men; and the wild rose of Japan, Corea, and 

 Northern China is so much more beautiful than 

 any other and so much finer in every way that 

 it occupies a place quite by itself in the rose 

 world. This is the Rugosa or Ramanas rose, in- 

 troduced to the western world about 1885, and 

 immediately firing the imagination of rose grow- 

 ers and horticulturists in Europe and America, 

 who foresaw in future hybrids from it the ideal 

 perfectly hardy and continuously blooming roses 

 they had so long sought to produce. This of 

 course was the beginning of the Rugosa group. 



Of these possibilities suffice to say that cer- 

 tain splendid roses already offered bear out 

 their expectations and stimulate their endeavors 

 further; but these are not of as great interest to 

 us here and now as the type itself, and its several 

 variations that still maintain the characteristics 

 of the original. It is a delightful shrub, notwith- 

 standing it is a rose, and perfectly at home in 

 the midst of a shrubbery mass where its splendid 

 foliage, rich green in color and deeply rugose or 

 creased and wrinkled, furnishes an unusually 

 vivid element. Its large pink or white single 

 blossoms (or semidouble as they are in some of 

 its variants) are produced freely in early sum- 

 mer and at intervals all summer; that is, there 



