ROSA DAMASCENA 
devotes a chapter to the Damask Rose, in which he describes the 
principal varieties at that time in cultivation. To this list Prince , 1 
who generally follows Rivers, adds about fifty more. William Paul 2 
enumerates and describes eighty-seven varieties, the majority of which 
have long since disappeared from our gardens. 
It is strange that the Damask Rose should have been passed over 
by Linnaeus, although he had a specimen in his herbarium, and it is 
one of the Roses most frequently mentioned by the pre-Linnaean 
writers. Among the early moderns we find it spoken of by Lobel , 3 
Sweert , 4 Besler, ' and many others. Sweert only has plates, but all the 
others give some account of the Rose, describing it, however, rather 
vaguely and giving no cultural directions. It is evident that many of 
the older writers used the name Damask Rose somewhat indiscrimin- 
ately, and they are only mentioned here because they have written on 
Roses which they called Damask and which may or may not be the 
true Rosa damascena , not because the Roses they described have been 
identified with it. 
The characters which principally distinguish Rosa damascena from 
Rosa ga llica and Rosa centifolia are the long deciduous sepals, reflexing 
during flowering time, the tall arching stems, which are nearly always 
green in colour, the larger, hooked prickles, thinner leaflets, softly 
pubescent underneath, flowers many in a corymb, and elongated fruit 
which turns bright red and pulpy in September. 
It has been commonly assumed that a Damask Rose must be 
deep red in colour, and the belief prevails as much in our own day as 
it did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fact is that 
the flowers vary in colour from deep red to pure white through every 
intermediate shade. 
Regel 6 asserts that Rosa damascena is of eastern origin, but he 
gives no precise localities, and Boissier does not include it in his Flora 
Orientalis , saying expressly that he never saw it spontaneous in the 
East, although it is universally cultivated there . 7 Hooker 8 says that 
it is the commonest Rose of Indian gardens, and is cultivated for 
making attar of roses ; he adds that its native country is unknown. 
Crepin 9 considers it a hybrid resulting from a cross between Rosa 
gallica and Rosa canina , which would account for its habitat never 
having been discovered. 
1 Manual of Roses, p. 47 (1846). 
2 Rose Garden , p. 19 (1848). 
3 Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia , p. 618 (1576) ; leones Stirpium seu Plantarum , vol. ii. p. 206 (1591). 
4 Florilegium , bk. ii. plate 37, fig. 5 (1612). 
5 Hortus Eystettensis , Vern. Ordo. VI. fol. 4 (1613). 
6 Act. Hort. Petrop. vol. v. pt. ii. p. 379 {Tent. Ros. Monogr. p. 95 [1877]) (1878). 
7 Flora Orientalis , vol. ii. p. 676 (1872). 
8 Flora of British India , vol. ii. p. 364 (1879). 
9 Bull. Soc. Bot. Belg. vol. xviii. p. 358 ( ' Primit . Monogr. Ros. fasc. v. p. 604 [1880]) (1879). 
373 
