Rosa “St Leonard”

Another box of roses arrived yesterday. The one you see above came out of the box in bloom, and a fresh flower was open this morning. This is a rose which has almost certainly grown in Maryland for at least a century, and  might just date to pre-Civil War times.

Mrs. Keays' Old Roses, published in 1935, has been a frequent companion in recent years. For me, the most intriguing  aspect of her book is her frequent discussions of what we now call “found” roses: those nameless roses which survive in old cemeteries or on old home sites, or have been passed along from person to person for who knows how long.  Notice the double quotes around the name "St Leonard". Standard practice is to use single quotes for accepted cultivar names. But this name, “St Leonard”, is not the original name of this rose. The original name has been lost, thus the double quotes for “St Leonard”. Roses in commerce come and go, and these comings and goings have little to do with the quality of the rose. When a rose survives among gardeners for decades, even centuries, that’s almost certainly a clear indication that that rose has something special to offer. And that something special more often than not is fragrance.

The rose called “St Leonard” is a good example of this. It’s nothing like modern garden roses: the flowers are small, seemingly shapeless and white with a touch of pink. The plant itself is a gaunt bush with the potential to occupy more space than most small modern gardens have to offer. But it does re-bloom throughout the season, and it carries one of the great rose fragrances.  

It has so far successfully kept its identity a secret: this same rose has evidently been found here and there around the country, and that suggests that it is not a spontaneous seedling but rather a once recognized cultivar deliberately spread by gardeners. See the note by Fred Boutin at the bottom of the page here:

http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.24832

The name used above, “St Leonard”, refers to the community in Calvert County, Maryland where Mrs. Keays first saw it about eighty years ago.  Its name was already lost back then, and who knows how long this rose had grown in that community. Where does it fall in the big rose picture? It’s what we would expect an early nineteenth century noisette to look like, and the assumption is that it is a forgotten noisette. The noisettes are hard to define because no sooner did they arise than they were hybridized out of recognition. Imagine what you would get by crossing the musk rose (or, since few people have any idea of what the old musk rose was like, substitute multiflora rose, which is very similar)  with a china or tea rose, and you’ll have an idea of what the early noisettes were.  From the beginning they were a variable lot.

Mrs. Keays' notes are valuable for another reason: roses which have persisted in gardens for decades are obviously well adapted to the conditions in those gardens. With noisettes, there is always the question of winter hardiness. Because the rose “St Leonard” seems to have survived for a long time at St Leonard, that raises hope that it will be a good garden plant here. Lusby and St Leonard are about 75 miles southeast of here, and St Leonard is close to the water.  I note that the elevation at St Leonard and Lusby is given as 105’; the elevation here is 285’ (both from Wikipedia). That difference in elevation might make a significant difference in its performance here. We’ll see. 

Three great roses

Here are three similar roses, roses which have long been favorites wherever they can be grown. The images above are stacked in chronological order: on top is ‘Lamarque’, a tea noisette raised in 1830 and one of the most popular roses during the nineteenth century. Next comes the climbing form of ‘Devoniensis’ a climbing tea rose. The bush form was raised in 1838, the climbing sport was introduced in 1858 . This climbing ‘Devoniensis’ has a suffusion of soft peach color in addition to the soft yellow. I’m enjoying both of these now from newly received plants, but I really don’t expect either to become well established in the garden without extensive winter protection and a carefully chosen site.


The third rose is ‘Albéric Barbier’ of 1900. This flower opened during relatively cool weather and thus shows a suffusion of yellow in the center. On the rare occasions when the weather conditions are just right, the flowers open pale yellow; in typically warm weather the flowers open white with no trace of yellow.

It was only when I noticed the suffusion of yellow in each of these roses that I began to connect them and see them in a historical context. Their recorded parentage suggests that they have little in common, yet they are much alike. When ‘Lamarque’ was introduced, roses in the modern high-centered style had yet to be developed. By the time the climbing form of ‘Devoniensis’ was introduced, the roses which were to become known as hybrid teas were already making the rounds. And by the time ‘Albéric Barbier’ was introduced, it must have seemed a bit old-fashioned from the start.

But maybe that was a good thing. When ‘Albéric Barbier’ was introduced, there must have been many rosarians who were very familiar with ‘Lamarque’ and ‘Devoniensis’. In ‘Albéric Barbier’ I wonder if they saw a chance to grow a similar rose under harsher conditions. Here in eastern North America, both ‘Lamarque’ and ‘Devoniensis’ are dubious much north of zone 8; ‘Albéric Barbier’ on the other hand takes our winters with ease and becomes a force with which to reckon.

Much as the flowers look alike, the fragrances of these roses are different. ‘Lamarque’ is sweet tea, ‘Devoniensis’ is tea with added sweetness and body, ‘Albéric Barbier’ is refreshingly tart green apple.

'Lamarque’ and ‘Devoniensis’ are results of cutting-edge hybridization in the early nineteenth century. The newly introduced tea rose (itself an old hybrid from China) was crossed with various existing European roses; the result was a sudden profusion of roses unlike any seen before. Because the potentially huge climbing Rosa moschata figured in the mix, some of these new roses were climbers by nature. These came to be known as Noisette roses or, if the tea influence was strong, tea-noisettes. Those which remained bushy, such as ‘Devoniensis’ came to be known as tea roses. When they produced climbing sports, those sports were called climbing teas rather than tea-noisettes. But the differences involved are differences of degree rather than differences in kind, and the resulting horticultural categories are highly artificial.

‘Albéric Barbier’ was the result of a similar but utterly different burst of cutting-edge hybridization nearly a century later. A newly introduced rose then known as Rosa wichuraiana was used to produce hybrids which in some ways paralleled the early nineteenth century hybrids and in other ways were very different. It’s easy to believe that those first hybridizers who used Rosa wichurana (as it is now called) had the high bar of accomplishment set by their early nineteenth century predecessors in mind: they managed to combine the grace of the early nineteenth century hybrids with a degree of vigor and cold hardiness formerly rare in climbing roses. The resulting hybrids were hugely popular for the next twenty or thirty years, and then began to slip into obscurity. Tastes have changed, but the roses themselves are as good as they ever were; and some of us are very glad indeed that so many have survived and can be grown in our gardens today.

Our rose covered cottage

For the next two weeks or so our house will be in rose-covered cottage mode. In the image above, the pale yellow roses spilling onto the roof are the Noisette roses 'Claire Jacquier' and

'Alister Stella Gray'. Nearby is a shrub of the fine old hybrid 'Scharlachglut', and around the corner, out of view in this picture, 'Madame Gregoire Staechelin' covers one side of the deck. All of these roses are richly fragrant, and they have the sort of fragrance which is free on the air.

The two Noisettes are yellow in cool, dull weather; in our typically sunny warm weather they are a very pale yellow or cream color. 'Madame Gregoire Staechelin' blooms in a range of cool pinks verging sometimes to very rich pink-red. 'Scharlachglut' is a wonderful color: it’s not simply red. When the blooms first open under cool conditions, they are an amazing, rich velvety red. What’s more, the red has a warmth of color which is very appealing. It’s well named: as the name suggests, it really does glow. Such is the fragrance of this rose that even if the blooms were tiny and white, I would still grow it.

Noisette roses

Although I’ve known about Noisette roses for decades, the concept of “Noisette rose” has proved to be elusive. My introduction to the group came from books. My introduction to the actual plants of this group, the group in its nominal sense, came through the widely revered old cultivar ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’. Another early acquisition, since lost, was ‘Champney’s Pink Cluster’. I think I can make a good argument that neither is really a Noisette rose.
In the case of ‘Champney’s Pink Cluster’, it’s the parent of the Noisettes and thus not a Noisette itself. It preceded the hybridizing work done by the Noisettes (the people, the family who did the early work to develop this group) themselves.
In the case of ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’, let’s just say she is for her time a very modern lady not about to be bound by the conventions of her class. She is, in fact, better understood as a modern, large-flowered climbing rose. She has Noisette in her ancestry – Noisette and a lot more. That those promoting her have chosen to emphasize the Noisette side of the family is perhaps understandable, but it’s also misleading.

Redouté painted one the roses raised by the Noisettes. To my eyes they look like what you might expect to get if you crossed Rosa multiflora with dwarf China roses. These original Noisette roses were quickly supplanted by better roses: better in the sense of more colorful and with larger flowers. It is said that much of the early breeding work in this group used the then widely grown tea roses, and the best Noisette roses are generally agreed to be the so-called tea Noisettes. It’s also generally agreed that these tea-Noisettes are not roses for us here in zone 7 eastern North America, although old books often contain descriptions of the lengths gardeners of those days went to grow these plants in the open. That they are cut back severely in our winters is only part of the problem; the other problem is that they are potentially huge plants, not easily protected in the winter.

The Noisettes in the accompanying image are two, although you would have to have very sharp eyes to realize that. They are ‘Alister Stella Gray’ and ‘Claire Jacquier’, and they look so much alike that I have spent a lot of time convincing myself that they really are distinct. These roses have a characteristic, light and very pleasant fragrance. It didn’t take as long as you might think for them to go to the eves of the house and then arch out gracefully over the garden.

All three of the roses mentioned here were raised in the late nineteenth century, long after the Noisettes as a group had moved from center-stage. Curiously, ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’, the least typical of the group, was the earliest of the trio to make her debut (in 1879 according to G. S. Thomas).

The image shows them at peak bloom in late May. This soft yellow color is lovely in the garden. In my experience, these roses never bloom again later in the season.