ROSES 185 



Walking round my garden with a special eye to the 

 roses, I see that in what I have written above I have 

 omitted many things that deserve notice ; I therefore 

 continue the subject, beginning with a rose which 

 stands alone in colour, not only among roses, but almost 

 among all flowers; this is the Austrian brier, and its 

 whole history is curious. No one knows its origin ; it 

 is supposed to be a variety of the single yellow rose (B. 

 lutea), itself a very scarce rose in a wild state, though 

 said to have been found ^Yild in Germany, France, and 

 Italy. The earliest notice I have been able to find of 

 it is in Parkinson's Theatrwn Botanicum, 1640, where it 

 is described as ' the single dwarf e red rose of Austria.' 

 The colour is quite peculiar : a deep crimson inside, and 

 yellow, almost golden, outside, and if seen against the 

 light, the yellow will affect the crimson or the crimson 

 the yellow, according as it is looked at from the inside 

 or the outside. I know of only one plant with the 

 same remarkable combination of colour in the petals, 

 the Potentilla Macnabiana, of the same family as the 

 Austrian brier (the Bosaceae). There is, however, a 

 flower in which the calix is a dull crimson and the 

 corolla a bright yellow, and, rather curiously, that too 

 is connected with Austria, — I mean the Ahutilon vexillcu- 

 rium, which obtained the name of Vexillarium because 

 the colours are those of the Austrian banner. In 



