NATIONAL ROSE CONFERENCE. 



185 



he should like to know how to grow it, as he had often tried and 

 had always failed. 



STOCKS FOE EOSES. 



By Mr. Edward Mawley, P.E.H.S., Hon. Sec. N.E.S. 



Although the battle of the stocks has now raged for many 

 years, rosarians are as yet by no means in agreement as to the 

 main points at issue, that is to say, which are the best stocks to 

 use for different varieties of roses under various conditions of 

 soil and climate. In the present modest contribution towards 

 the elucidation of this vexed question, I propose simply stating 

 the results of my own personal experience of the four stocks 

 most frequently employed — the Manetti, the seedling-briar, the 

 briar-cutting, and the standard-briar. During the fourteen years 

 I cultivated roses at Croydon, plants were purchased at different 

 times on all these stocks, and each year roses were budded on 

 one or other of them. From casual observation of these pur- 

 chased and budded plants I had no reason to prefer any one 

 particular stock beyond the other three, all appearing to thrive 

 about equally well. In making up fresh beds plants on each 

 stock were used indiscriminately, so that I was unable after- 

 wards to form any precise judgment as to their individual merits. 

 As indirect testimony, however, in favour of all four, it may be 

 mentioned that the plants were, with scarcely an exception, 

 unusually vigorous, and that it was very rarely indeed that any 

 plant in my rose-beds either died or became so weakly as to 

 justify its removal. 



In the winter of 1884-5, 120 of these dwarf plants were taken 

 up, removed to Berkhamsted, and planted together in a single 

 bed. At the present time, although both soil and climate are 

 here very different from what they were at Croydon, they still 

 continue to maintain to a great extent the character I formed of 

 them when there. In fact, taken together, they are the best rose 

 X>lants that I have. There are now only two blanks in the whole 

 bed, and only a few plants, and those mostly of one variety 

 (A. K. Williams), which are at all weakly; and yet many of 

 these plants were four or more years old when first brought to 

 Berkhamsted, and the youngest of them all cannot well be 

 less than six years old. It is from this bed that in most years I 



