ROSA GIGANTEA 
flowering stage. It blossomed for the first time in England at Albury 
Park, Guildford, in 1903. 
Rosa macrocarpa, which was found by Sir George Watt in Manipur 
in 1882, was believed by Crepin to be identical with Rosa gigantea , 
but Sir George himself considers them distinct. In an unpublished 
diary he gives the following description of Rosa macrocarpa , or, as he 
afterwards named it, Rosa xanthocarpa : 
“ An extensive climber, running over trees and forming at first straight 
unbranched stems, as thick as the arm, younger ones with a soft grey-brown bark 
and here and there short sharp hooked prickles ; above completely ramified until it 
envelopes the trees on which it is found. It thus produces a truly superb effect, and, 
when seen from a distance, causes the trees to appear like magnolias, with large 
yellow flowers. The leaves when young have a rich brownish green tint; when older 
they become pale shining green ; leaflets 5-7, ovate-oblong, acuminate, shortly and 
sharply serrate, the terminal one on a long petiole (1 in.), the others almost sessile ; 
stipules very long, linear, adnate throughout their length (except their spreading 
terminal arms) and thus extending along the greater portion of the leaf-stalk ; in 
the more vigorous shoots they are conspicuous and red-coloured, but in the older 
parts they become very narrow. Prickles very few on the flowering branches, 
short, sharp, recurved ; on the young flowerless shoots large, massive, flat, recurved. 
Flowers solitary or two or three in the axils of the terminal leaves of the shoots ; 
flower-buds very long, smooth, glaucous. Calyx-teeth erect in bud, long, lanceolate, 
acuminate, quite entire, not becoming foliaceous but embracing firmly the pointed 
bud, silky tomentose upon the upper surface and margins (ciliate), quite glabrous 
below (that is, the outer surface of the bud), sharply Aflexed when the flower is 
fully expanded. Ovary (the hip) glabrous ; achenes very large, massive, sparsely 
hairy, with long, protruding, free styles and yellow globular stigmas. Stamens 
numerous, anthers orange-coloured. The fleshy hip or fruit is eaten by the Nagas, 
becomes as large as a small apple, and is smooth, glabrous, yellow (certainly never 
red, as has been said of the species grown in Europe) and sweetly scented. 
“ This species seems to me as possibly allied to, though quite distinct from, 
Rosa chinensis Jacq., and may probably be the true ancestral form of the Tea-roses. 
It was nowhere observed near villages, but was found frequenting the forests, far 
away from human dwellings. Since the Nagas do not cultivate flowering plants 
and seem never to have done so, there is no reason to doubt but that Rosa 
macrocarpa is, as stated, a truly indigenous plant on the north-eastern mountains 
of the Burma-Manipur frontier.” 
In support of his view that the two Roses should be kept distinct 
Sir George adds that in all the forms of Rosa gigantea under cultivation 
the leaflets are much narrower than in Rosa macrocarpa , they are 7-9 
in number instead of 5-7, with petioles often formidably armed ; and 
moreover the flowers of Rosa gigantea are white, whilst those of Rosa 
macrocarpa are distinctly yellow. He suggests that the Rosa gigantea 
of cultivation may possibly be some hybrid of Rosa chinensis . 
The flowers from which the drawing was made came from the 
fine plant in Lord Brougham’s garden at Cannes. 
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