490 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The last variety is Tibetan. It is an early-flowering plant ; the 

 branches are spreading; the foliage abundant, although the leaflets are 

 rather small. The flowers, two inches in diameter, are of a fine red 

 colour or carmine- pink ; the filaments of the stamen are red also, and 

 the anthers orange-coloured : the whole bears an unusual appearance. 

 The fruits, very long and numerous, are quite ornamental in the autumn. 

 Were it not for M. Crepin's authority I should have doubted this strange 

 plant being a Macrophylla. (Fig. 139.) 



Webb's Rose (R. Wcbbiana, Wallich) is also a very nice and vari- 

 able Rose. The plant I received first from the Himalayas bears, 

 according to the description, light-rose flowers borne on a hispid 

 receptacle ; but I obtained two other distinct forms from Chinese seeds. 

 One is a very compact bush, the branches bearing a quantity of small, 

 curved, extremely thin ramifications, with rather long, fine, and pointed 

 ivory-white spines, and abundant but very small leaves ; with a quantity 

 of small whitish-rosy flowers, crowded together at the extremity of the 

 branches. The fruits, very small also, are smooth. 



The other form has flowered this spring for the first time. It is a 

 vigorous bush with abundant foliage, and in that way superior to the 

 type. The flowers are also larger and of a vivid pink colour. As is the 

 case with the preceding variety, the fruits and peduncles are smooth. 



There remains for me to speak of a very curious and interesting Rose, 

 the Rosa sericea, known for its strange anomaly of presenting flowers 

 with four divisions instead of five in the calyx and the corolla. 



The first seeds I had came to me from the much-regretted botanist 

 the Abbe Delavay, then living in Southern China (Yunnan). The first 

 packet bore the inscription, ''Rose with decurrent prickles," the second 

 only " White-flowering Rose." 



From that second packet a Rose issued which only produced flowers 

 after ten years. The flower is white when completely opened ; after 

 some hours the expanding flower is pale yellow. In this variety the 

 branches are arched, the bark very smooth and orange-brown, and the 

 prickles are straight and rather few. 



It is the reverse in the Rose with decurrent (underhanging) prickles. 

 In that variety the base of each leaf is accompanied by two long parallel 

 blades, which bear a very curious appearance, being vastly different from 

 the customary shape of spines. In some branches, however, instead of 

 being one or two inches long, they are nearer to the usual form and 

 mingled with acicular spines. The thorns when young are of a fine 

 red colour, and when the young shoots are lighted up by the sun from 

 behind, the prickles, being somewhat transparent, shine like jewels. 



The Sericea flowers very early ; in some plants the fruit is formed and 

 red by the beginning of July. The two above-mentioned varieties from 

 Yunnan have red fruits. The seeds received from Se Tchuen gave a 

 majority of plants with yellow fruits. The bushes from that province 

 have generally very long and elegant shoots. The foliage of this Rose is 

 extremely nice, the leaves being composed of numerous little leaflets of a 

 \< ry pleasing and line green. Few scaly buds are visible in this species, 

 their place being marked by two opposite leaves, a notable addition to the 

 ma^s of the foliage. (Fig. 140.) 



