38 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTIC ULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ON THE HYBRIDISATION OF THE GENUS BOS A. 

 By Monsieur Viviand-Morel. 



Roses have been cultivated in Europe and Asia from the remotest ages. 

 Poets and historians have handed down to us written testimony which 

 leaves no doubt on the subject. We have not, it is true, any precise data 

 as to the varieties cultivated by the ancients, but it is not too much to 

 suppose that they were not very numerous. In the sixteenth century 

 botanists only described a small number of different ones, and at least one 

 half of these were single. 



Two hundred years later the number had but little increased, and if 

 we consult Philip Miller, one of the best English gardeners who wrote on 

 horticulture, we learn that in his time, in England, there were only 

 twenty-one species in cultivation, of which several were ordinary Briers. 

 As to double Roses, he enumerates about thirty varieties. 



We have enormously advanced upon those days, as is proved by the 

 2,562 species or varieties cultivated in France, and enumerated and briefly 

 described by Monsieur R. Desportes in 1829. 



It would have been difficult to understand why the Rose, cultivated as 

 it had been for centuries, produced so few varieties with double flowers, 

 while in comparatively a few years recently there should all at once have 

 sprung up thousands, if it were not that a new factor, or rather a new 

 influence, has arrived upon the scene, to throw new life into the genus 

 Eosa, until then so chary of producing new varieties. This new factor is 

 the hybridising and crossing of European with Asiatic species. 



The Roses actually in cultivation in amateurs' gardens may, as regards 

 their origin, be classed in several categories, viz. : 



(1) Varieties or variations found in a wild state and transplanted 

 into gardens. 



(2) Varieties or variations produced by existing ones and raised from 

 seed without having been artificially fertilised. 



(3) Varieties of hybrid origin. 



(4) Varieties arising from partial reversion and obtained from seed 

 saved from hybrid subjects. 



(5) Crosses obtained by crossing hybrids which, though sterile with 

 their own pollen, have proved fertile with pollen from another plant. 



(6) Second crosses springing from the preceding or their offspring. 



(7) Teratological varieties. 



You may perhaps think that, arranged in this way, the origin of Roses 

 is very complicated, and no doubt it is so, but no other arrangement based 

 on origin is possible. I have indeed somewhat simplified the classifica- 

 tion and diminished the number of categories. My object in drawing 

 up this paper on the hybridising of Roses is to show nurserymen and 

 amateur growers that it is still possible to obtain fine new varieties, and 



