THE BIRTH OF A CLASSIC ROSE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIII, Issue XLIII, 14 September 1909, Page 4

THE BIRTH OF A CLASSIC ROSE.

li} the matter of rose ideas, says a writer'ih an English exchange, the public shows a rather curious unconcern! It accepts the last novelty with conviction ; but of the rationale of raieing new varieties it knows nothing. It does not know the nnmes of. the raisers, men who are benefactors of their race in a way that might be envied by some of much larger report in the world. The perse? vOTanee and long sighted care-, the methodical acceptance of disappointments, the gift of catching at happy -chances, all of which go to the making of a memorable new rose, have their own reward, perhaps, when once in a dozen years or so a star of the first magnitude, a Gloire de Dijon., a Jacqueminot, a La France, rises upon the rosarian horizon. The rewards of the patient workers at crossing and proving are, in terms of fame at least, quite incommensurate with their best achievements. They might be larger if the duties of the hybridist and the ethics of his art 'were better defined and understood. In the order of roses alone there is a saddening 1 , tale of misdirected energy in ,the innumerable names which fill the fists of noveltios and drop into oblivion year by year! ' T?ii'o var'e event 'of the birth of a classic lose, a "type" which survives the incessant "Improvements" of the shows, must have set against, it tho wilderness of rubbish, His coarseness, the meretricious form, tb« repugnant colour, the difficult habit. We want a recognition of some canon of taste in rose raising, as in all horticultural development. At least certain principles might be kept in view, such as the necessary' connection between bigness and hardness and th.c elements of purify in tint,, and the question might at least be moved whether there is not for roses, as i'or men, a preper size and stature, beyond which they are gigantic and altogether uncomfortable. A hybridist with a spark of imagination in him might reach unsuspected heights ; but let him always bear in niilnd th<j origins from which he works, the genius -of tha wild stock, which will not suffer itself to Be improved indefinitely in every quality. No richest specimen, at its prime in th.6 June garden, brond-bluseomc^ symmetrjecvl, glowing with colour, thick petalled, should make Turn forget the wild dog tosb's infinito delicacy of texture, of hue, of soont, the treasure which he takes away from his finest seedling with one hand while with the other he makes it put new glories on.