NOTES ON THE ORIGIN OF THE MOSS-ROSE. 29 
are on the borders of or in Persia is also significant, for Persia is a 
country which has been famous for its fragrant Roses from the earliest 
times. Fluckiger (1862) refers to a Persian document in the National 
Library in Paris which states that in the year 810, the province of 
Farsistan was required to pay an annual tribute of 30,000 bottles of 
Rose-water to the Treasury of Baghdad. The most important culti- 
vations of Roses for distilling Rose-water were near Shiraz, and are 
"even to this day" (Fluckiger, 1883). Lindley (1820) in commenting 
on the celebrated Roses of Shiraz, praised so enthusiastically by 
Kaempfer (1712) suggests that the Rose of Shiraz may be the Cabbage- 
Rose (R. centifolia L.) or possibly R. damascena Mill. It was at Shiraz 
that one of the MSS. of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was tran- 
scribed in 1460. The immortal Persian poet and philosopher, who 
flourished in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was a passionate 
lover of the Rose — as well of the Vine — and red, white, yellow and 
flesh-coloured Roses are referred to in the Rubaiyat, 
It is related by FitzGerald (1859) that one day in a garden Omar 
Khayyam said to one of his pupils, Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, 
" My tomb shall be in a spot where the North wind may scatter Roses 
over it," and it was so, for on his grave at Naishapur a Rose tree was 
planted. In Willmott (1914) the late Dr. J. G. Baker (whose botanical 
knowledge of Roses was unrivalled) relates how a hip of this Rose 
was brought home by Mr. Simpson, the artist of the " Illustrated 
London News," and sent to Kew by the late Mr. Bernard Quaritch, 
from which seedlings were raised which proved to be R. damascena 
Mill., a species, as we have seen, that is allied to the Cabbage-Rose, 
R. centifolia L., but distinct from it. All of which goes to confirm 
Lindley's conjecture, that the celebrated Rose of Shiraz may have 
been one of these species. The date of the introduction of the 
Cabbage-Rose to England is unknown ; it may have come during 
the Roman occupation of Britain with the " English " Elm, or 
it may have come later through the monastery and convent gardens, 
in which, according to Amherst (1895), Roses were cultivated 
as far back as the eleventh century, in the reign of William Rufus. 
On the authority of Anselm it is related that the Red King, in order 
to see the twelve-year-old Matilda at the convent of Romsey, entered 
the convent on the pretext of looking at the roses in the garden. 
The late Canon Ellacombe (1905) believed that the Cabbage-Rose 
was certainly in cultivation in England in the fifteenth century and 
probably earlier. He identifies it with the - Rose of Rone ' of 
Chaucer, and with the ' Provincial Rose ' of Shakespeare, and adds 
that the name of this Rose would be more properly written ' Provence 
or Provins.' It is a curious fact that at Burbage the old Cabbage- 
Rose for eighty years at least has been more commonly called and 
known as the ' Red Province,' which is the old name used by the 
English Herbalists, Gerard (1596), Parkinson (1629), and Salmon, 
(1710). Apparently Miller (1733) was the first to change ' Province ' 
to ' Provence ' though he still retained provincialis for the Latin 
