The TOUHO HATOEAUST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History 



Pi^ET 44. JULY, 1883. Vol. 4. 



ROSES. 



By J. P. SouTTER, Bishop Auckland. 



A COMPLETE volume of the Young 

 Naturalist might be filled about 

 roses and yet a great deal of their 

 botanical and legendary lore be left 

 unsaid. The limits of an ordinary 

 paper will only permit of indicating in 

 the briefest manner a few of the salient 

 points in their structure and some of 

 the more prominent associations which 

 cluster round the queen of British 

 flowers. The extensive natural order 

 -ffOAS^CjS!^ includes a number of plants 

 of great importance to man, as it fur- 

 nishes many of our choicest native 

 fruits, such as plums, cherries, peaches, 

 apples, pears, raspberries, blackberries, 

 and strawberries. The genus Rosa, or 

 true roses, also produces an almost 

 endless variety of showy flowers, love- 

 able alike for their beauty and fragrance. 

 Of the cultivated varieties — the florist's 

 pride — I dare not speak, for even the 

 native species would require a mono- 

 graph for themselves. So excessive is 

 the variability of the genus that per- 

 haps no two botanists are agreed as to 



the number of species, sub-species, and 

 varieties indigenous to our islands. 

 Recent floras give over seventy named 

 species and varieties, of which nearly 

 one half are assigned to the common 

 dog-rose (R. ca^iina), and the number is 

 yearly being added to by the experts. 

 It is beyond the scope of these articles 

 to give sufficiently minute details of 

 description so as to enable anyone to 

 identify every one of these varieties. 

 Put there are several well-marked 

 groups to which it may interest the 

 young beginner in systematic botany 

 to be able to refer the roses he may 

 casually meet with in his walks abroad. 

 For this purpose, the prickles, which 

 form so effective and admirable a defen- 

 sive armour for the rose, affords some 

 useful classificatory characteristics. 



In the first group the whole stem is 

 densely clothed with straight, slender, 

 needle- like prickles, markedly unequal 

 in length, running down by insensible 

 gradations from three-quarters of an 

 inch to a mere point. Two very distinct 

 species belong to this group. The 

 burnet-leaved or Scotch rose {R. sjoino- 

 sissima) is readily known by its large, 



