ROSA BANKSIAE 
variety with small white flowers and purple centre is very fragrant, 
while that with yellow flowers and green centre is scentless. He also 
mentions a third variety with large white flowers, the scent of which is 
not remarkable. 
The first plant brought to England was certainly that of the double 
white-flowered form, which blossomed in Sir Joseph Banks’ garden 
at Spring Grove, Isleworth, and from which the drawing in the 
Botanical Magazine was made. 1 In 1819 it was drawn for the 
Botanical Register , the plant having in the meantime attained to a 
considerable size ; it is this form, too, of which Lindley gives a figure 
in his Monograph of 1820. A plant growing in the Orangery at 
Ditton Park had a stem eighteen inches in circumference, and as it 
had been there for over eighty years, it must have been one of the 
earliest planted in this country. The first Banksian Rose to blossom 
in Paris was also the double white-flowered variety, which M. Boursault 
had brought from England in 1819 and planted in his temperate 
house. Here the plants, grown in peat, reached the height of about 
forty feet and blossomed freely. Redoute’s drawing was made from 
one of these. 
The Jardin de la Marine at Toulon at one time possessed a 
magnificent specimen which had been sent there in 1813 by M. Bon- 
pland. Loiseleur-Deslongchamps 2 states that in 1833 its stem was 
2 feet 4 inches in circumference, while the largest of its six branches 
measured a foot in girth. The measurements were made by M. Robert, 
who said that on receiving the plant he had kept it in a pot two or three 
years, during which time it languished, but when planted out it grew 
so vigorously that in thirty years it covered the surface of a wall 75 by 
18 feet. It would have considerably surpassed these limits had the 
space allowed, but Robert was obliged each season to cut away a large 
part of it, which he used as faggots for heating his furnace. This grand 
plant, which had been the admiration of all beholders, was destroyed 
in 1869 when the Jardin de la Marine was abandoned. 
The Abbe Berleze described another very fine plant at Caserta 
1 In the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society for November, 1909 (p. 218), Mr. E. H. Woodall, 
F.R.H.S., gives the following interesting account of the introduction of Rosa Banksiae : “ A curious fact 
concerning the Banksian Rose has this year come to light. The double white form of Rosa Banksiae was 
introduced to Kew in the early part of the nineteenth century, in 1815, but Wm. Kerr, according to a note 
in the Botanical Register , had it in cultivation as early as 1807. The double yellow was introduced some 
years later, and the single yellow only made its appearance about 1870. The typical form, the single 
white, remained unknown, though many inquiries were made for it in France, where these climbing roses 
abound in every garden in the Riviera, as well as in Italy and Switzerland. Four years ago I found a rose 
growing on the wall of Megginch Castle, Strathtay, Scotland, which seemed to me a very slender-growing 
form of R. Banksiae. Captain Drummond of Megginch told me it was a rose that his ancestor, Robert 
Drummond, had brought with other plants from China the year his brother, Admiral Sir W. Drummond, 
had cruised in the China seas, in 1796. This old rose had been repeatedly cut to the ground by severe 
winters, and rarely if ever had been known to flower. The impression, however, was that it was white and 
very small. Captain Drummond kindly gave me cuttings, which I took to Nice, and this year they flowered, 
proving themselves to be the single white Banksian rose so long sought for and hidden away in this nook of 
Scotland for more than 100 years. The introduction of the Banksian rose, therefore, is due to Robert 
Drummond of Megginch, who brought it from China in the year 1796.” 
2 La Rose , p. 289 (1844). 
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