Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



seems no reason to doubt that it was known to the 

 Romans. It may be Pliny's Milesian rose, which he 

 describes as having the brightest colours, but not 

 more than twelve petals. The gardeners of Miletus 

 probably imported it from Damascus, where King- 

 lake in Eothen speaks of it as growing to an 

 immense height. Some of its varieties are extremely 

 vigorous in this country. I have a specimen of the 

 kind called Lady Curzon, some ten years old, which 

 is fifteen feet through and still spreading. 



This must be the rose of our third passage, for 

 none other known to the Romans could in any way 

 be said to bloom twice. Of its descendants the Red 

 Monthly and the White Monthly. Mr. Pemberton 

 says that both produce ' a second and even a third 

 crop of flowers in favourable seasons.' Some com- 

 mentators speak of an autumnal crop of roses at 

 Pesto, but this crop is of their own invention. No 

 ancient authority knows anything of autumnal roses, 

 and the interval between the two crops of the damask 

 is very brief. Considering how short the normal 

 time of blossoming is, we need not wonder that the 

 Romans, who valued the flower so highly, welcomed 

 any lengthening of its season. By Domitian's time 

 they had learnt the art of hastening the flowering 

 season by growing their roses in greenhouses or 

 frames, ' specularia,' which had already been used 

 to give Tiberius cucumbers all the year round. 

 There is, however, no mention of these devices in 

 Virgil's time. The so-called greenhouse of Maecenas 

 on the Esquiline, even if it did contain plants, a thing 



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