In My Vicarage Garden 



few red pear-shaped hips, and I believe, though 

 I have never tried, that it comes true from seed. 

 It is not a very common rose now, though I fancy 

 it was fairly common in old English gardens, but 

 it has been supplanted by the more showy rose, 

 which I call the second sort of the true York and 

 Lancaster roses. This is a variety of Rosa 

 Gallica, but I have not been able to find any 

 account of its introduction into England, and it 

 is generally said to have been first raised in 

 England, but of this there is no certain proof, but 

 it seems to have been chiefly noticed by English 

 writers. I can find no earlier notice than in 

 Gilbert's Florists' Vade Mecuin, 1682 — an ex- 

 cellent little book. His description seems to 

 imply that neither the rose nor the name were 

 novelties at that time. He describes it thus : — 



"Rosa Mundi, the Rose of the World for Scent and form 

 like the common red one, but the colours differ to admira- 

 tion, were it not by its great increasing grown too common, 

 are in this flower for the most part of a pale flush-colour, 

 diversely spotted, and finely marked with great flakes of the 

 same red as in the common red Rose, making it through the 

 double flower the loveliest thing to eye of its species " (p. 77). 



It was well figured by Miller in 1758 as Rosa 

 Pranestina variegata flore plena; by Miss Lawrence 

 in 1796 as Rosa Mundi; and in the Botanical 

 Magazine in 18 16 as Rosa Gallica versicolor or 

 R. Mundi. All these names are certainly wrong ; 

 there can be nothing to connect the York and 

 Lancaster rose with Pliny's roses of PrcBneste, of 

 92 



