PRACTICE OF GARDENING. 



PART III, 



of the most humble cottager upwards ; some species, as R. centifolia damascena, &c. are 

 also cultivated by commercial gardeners on a large scale for distilling rose-water, and for 

 making attar, or essential oil of roses. Six pounds of rose-leaves will impregnate by dis- 

 tillation a gallon of water strongly with their odor ; but a hundred pounds afford 

 -scarcely half an ounce of attar. The rose is also used in medicine. Botanists are not 

 agreed as to the number of original species of this genus, some regard all the European 

 species as originated from one source ; others, and especially the moderns, divide them 

 into species, subspecies, and varieties. The most scientific work which has appeared 

 on the roses in England, is the Rosarum Monographia of Lindley, 1819, in which 

 above a hundred species or subspecies are described, and some of them figured ; and 

 Miss Laurence has published ninety plates of A Collection of Roses from Nature, 

 ]810. In France, Guillemeau has published Histoire Naturelle de la Rose, 1800; 

 and Redoute and Thory are engaged in a splendid work, in folio, entitled Les Roses, 

 containing plates of all the known species and varieties of this flower. Thory has pub- 

 lished a separate tract on their culture, entitled Prodrome de la Monographic du Genre 

 Rosier, &c. 1820; Pronville, a Nomenclature Raisonnee, in 1818; and Vibert, Ob- 

 servations, &c. in 1820. A copious and intelligent account of the Scotch roses has been 

 lately given by Sabine (Hort. Trans, iv. 231.), and some hundreds of new varieties have 

 flowered from seedling plants, in the nursery of Lee, and will soon be found in his sale- 

 catalogues. 



6545. Species and varieties. The lists of the London and Paris nurserymen contain upwards of 500 

 names : that of Calvert and Co., Englishmen, who have established a nursery at Bonne Nouvelle near 

 Rouen, enumerates near 900 sorts. The greater part of these have been raised from seed on the continent, 

 where it ripens better than in this country, within the last thirty years. A number of varieties have also 

 been raised in Britain, especially of the It. spinosissima, or Scotch rose, of which above 300 varieties 

 are procurable in the Glasgow nursery. New varieties are raised in France and Italy annually ; Villaresi, 

 royal gardener at Monza, has raised upwards of fifty varieties of Rosa irulica , not one of which have, as 

 far as we know, reached this country. Some of them are quite black, others shaped like a ranunculus, 

 and many of them highly odoriferous. The following table contains nearly 150 species and varieties of sin- 

 gle roses, of longest standing, arranged according to their time of flowering, heights, and colors ; and of 

 the greater number of which there are double and semi-double varieties of the same colors. The names 

 are chiefly taken from Page's Prodromus, and the plants are known by them in the Hammersmith nursery". 

 Ample lists, as already observed, may be had from all the principal nurserymen, and the best mode of 

 making a selection is to view the plants while in flower. 



6546. 



ROSES. MAY. 



