Magenta to Pink 



larger and slightly fragrant flowers, at first pink, later pure white. 

 Their styles are separate, not cohering in a column nor project- 

 ing as in the climbing rose. This is a leafy, low bush mostly less 

 than three feet high ; it is either entirely unarmed, or else pro- 

 vided with only a few weak prickles ; the stipules are rather 

 broad, and the leaf is compounded of from five to seven oval,, 

 blunt, and pale green leaflets, often hoary below. 



In swamps and low, wet ground from Quebec to Florida, 

 and westward to the Mississippi, the Swamp Rose (/?. Carolina) 

 blooms late in May and on to midsummer. The bush may grow 

 taller than a man, or perhaps only a foot high. It is armed with 

 stout, hooked, rather distant prickles, and few or no bristles. The 

 leaflets, from five to nine, but usually seven, to a leaf, are smooth, 

 pale, or perhaps hairy beneath to protect the pores from filling 

 with moisture arising from the wet ground. Long, sharp calyx 

 lobes, which drop off before the cup swells in fruit into a round, 

 glandular, hairy red hip, are conspicuous among the clustered 

 pink flowers and buds. 



Surely no description of our Common, Low, Dwarf, or Pas- 

 ture Rose {R. humilis) — R. lucida of Gray — is needed. One's 

 acquaintance with flowers must be limited indeed, if it does not 

 include this most abundant of all the wild roses from Ontario to 

 Georgia, and westward to Wisconsin. In light, dry, or rocky 

 soil we find the exquisite, but usually solitary, blossom late in 

 May until July, and, like most roses, it has the pleasant practice 

 of putting forth a stray blossom or two in early autumn. The 

 stamens of this species are turned outward so strongly that self- 

 pollination must very rarely take place. 



Among the following charming wild roses, not natives, but 

 naturalized immigrants from foreign lands, that have escaped 

 from gardens, is Shakespeare's Canker-bloom, the lovely Dog 

 Rose or Wild Brier (/?. canina), that spreads its long, straggling 

 branches along the roadsides and banks, covering the waste 

 lands with its smooth, beautiful foliage, and in June and July with 

 pink Oi' white roses. Because it lacks the fragrance of sweet 

 brier, which it otherwise closely resembles, it has been branded 

 with the dog prefix as a mark of contempt. Professor Koch 

 says that long before it was customary to surround gardens with 

 walls, men had rose hedges. "Each of the four great peoples of 

 Asia," he continues, "possessed its own variety of rose, and 

 carried it during all wanderings, until finally all four became the 

 common property of the four peoples. The great Indo-Ger- 

 manic stock chose the ' hundred-leaved ' and Red Rose (/?. Gal- 

 lica) ; nevertheless, after the Niebelungen the common dog rose 

 played an important part among the ancient Germans. The 



lOO 



