82 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 

 Old and New Roses. 



By Joseph H. Bourn, Providence, R.I. 



The roses appi'opriate to tins climate and localitj' for out-door 

 culture, called Reviontant and Hybrid Tea, are the most valuable, 

 if not the most beitutiful, of all the groups of Sappho's " queen of 

 flowers." A lack of the requisite specific knowledge of the most 

 approved and hardy varieties, uuited to ignorance of their practi- 

 cal treatment, delayed an interest which the rose admirer now 

 manifests when he looks in pleasurable admiration at the im- 

 proved forms of nature's sweet offering, indubitably excelling the 

 rhodon and rosa thus spoken of in the remote past b}' the poet : — 



"Dear to earth, thy smiling bloom; 

 Dear to heaven, thy rich perfume." 



The Greeks adored this flower of the highest antiquity, and the 

 Romans bestowed praises on its loveliness. Anacreon sang its 

 primal birth ; Homer extolled its gracefulness, and borrowed its 

 brilliant colors to paint the glowing richness of the rising sun; 

 Herodotus exulted over the sixty petalled varieties which grew 

 spontaneously in the gardens of Midas in Macedonia; Catullus 

 vaunted its charms ; and Horace admired " the richly tinted face, 

 whose bloom is soon fled ; " Virgil contrasts the pale sallow witli the 

 blushing hues, and extols the roses of Poestum with their " double 

 spring." Those costl3' ornamental gardens, destroyed almost 

 ten centuries ago, no longer shed the morning fragrance of rose 

 perfume. Nettles and brambles encumber the footpath of the 

 traveller, and, like a poetic memorv of the past, the cyclamen and 

 the violet now trail among the debris of the old cit}'. Ausonius, 

 writing at the very close of Latin literature, draws from the 

 roseries of Psestum a picture of " beauty doomed to premature 

 decline," and tells of watching " the luxurious rose beds, all 

 dewy in the young light of the rising dawn-star." Roses bore 

 away the palm from all flowers during the sovereignty of 

 Augustus and subsequent rulers ; but Cicero did not approve of 

 the custom, introduced l\v those who were given to luxurious 

 entertainments, of taking their meals reclining on rose leaves. 

 Verres, a Roman governor of Sicil}', gave audiences wearing 



