ROSA LAEVIGATA 
not glandular on the back, aciculate on the margin in the lower part. Corolla pure 
white, 3 in. diam. ; petals inodorous. Styles not exserted. Fruit oblong, red, 
densely aciculate ; sepals spreading, finally deciduous. 
This beautiful and very distinct Rose is a native of southern China. 
It was first described by Plukenet in 1705 1 under the name of "Rosa 
alba cheusanensis foliorum marginibus et rachi media spinosis.” 
Few Roses have such a bewildering synonymy as Rosa laevigata , 
and many eminent botanists have confused it, a surprising fact when 
it is remembered how distinct and well marked a species it really is. 
It was overlooked by Linnaeus, and there is no specimen in his her- 
barium. His Rosa sinica was founded upon a specimen of Rosa 
chmensis Jacq. with monstrous sepals. The names under which it 
is most generally but erroneously known are Rosa sinica L., Rosa 
Camellia Hort. and the Cherokee Rose. Botanists are agreed in 
referring these and several other names to one and the same Rose, the 
Rosa laevigata of Michaux. 
The Cherokee Rose was for many years believed to be indigenous 
to the southern United States, where it was in 1803 collected by 
Michaux. But the consensus of opinion has decided that Rosa laevigata 
is not an American plant. Its native habitats are given as China, 
Japan and the Isle of Formosa; Japan, however, is considered as a 
doubtful station, and it was more probably introduced from China. 
Bose, who calls it Rosier trifoliole , says that it is a native of China 
and is cultivated in French gardens under the name of Rosier toujour s 
vert cle la Chine , but he adds that it seldom blooms in France. 2 
Siebold cultivated it in Japan under the name of Rosa Camellia . It 
is abundantly naturalized in the southern United States, Madeira and 
the Cape of Good Hope. There is a specimen in the Smithian her- 
barium from Carolina, collected by Fraser in 1791. It is said to have 
been cultivated by Philip Miller at Chelsea in 1759. Lowe says that 
in Madeira, where it is erroneously called the Macartney Rose, it 
makes shoots twelve to eighteen feet long in a single year. In the 
Phonzo Zoufou , part 27, three forms are figured ; the type, called Nanisa , 
a form with double flowers called Botanbara , and a third form, probably 
a hybrid, with purplish flowers and naked calyx and peduncle, called 
Hatobara . The variety Braamiana of Regel 3 is founded on a figure 
in Braam’s drawings of Chinese plants with four or five flowers and 
five to seven leaflets ; it is doubtless a hybrid. 
If Rosa laevigata , the Cherokee Rose, could be grown in England 
as it is grown in southern Europe, Madeira, Teneriffe and China, it 
would take rank as one of the very finest wall Roses. It is perfectly 
1 Amoltheum , p. 185. Plukenet’s type-specimen is in the herbarium of the British Museum. 
2 In Nouveau Cours d’ Agriculture, vol. xlii. p. 280 (1823). 
3 Act. Hort. Petrop. vol. v. p. 327 {Tent. Ros. Monogr. p. 43 [1877]) (1878). 
I 18 
