ROSES AND THEIR CULTURE 227 



by being clustered in flower. Their origin was 

 about 1814 and curiously enough American, 

 though it was Louis Noisette of France who sent 

 them out first and for whom they are named. 

 They started with a hybrid between the tender 

 China or Bengal rose and the equally tender 

 musk rose; and of them it is enough to say that 

 some of the finest yellow roses are in this class 

 — but that they are not more hardy than the 

 Tea rose. 



No chapter on roses is complete without 

 reference to the wild roses of our own United 

 States, which offer material for shrubbery plant- 

 ing and for naturalizing in wild situations, quite 

 unrivaled. There is first of all the prairie rose 

 — rosa setigera of the botanists and nurserymen 

 — which grows six feet high and has long, droop- 

 ing canes that are loaded with the clustered 

 single pink blossoms for two or three weeks at 

 a time, since they do not open at once but suc- 

 cessively. 



Then there are the six-foot rosa lucida with 

 solitary bright pink flowers and warm red- 

 brown stems in winter that are most decorative, 

 with bright red hips or pods scattered along 

 them; rosa humilis that is usually only half 

 the height of the first which it otherwise closely 

 resembles; rosa nitida which is again half the 



