S'il vous plaît permettez-moi de vous présenter 'Butterfly Magic'....er....excuse me.....Please allow me to introduce you to 'Butterfly Magic', a Griffith Buck rose introduced by Chamblee's Rose Nursery in 2010. As many are aware, there are 10 "posthumous" Griffith Buck roses which were originally given to friends and later introduced after Dr. Buck's death in 1991. Their parentage is often unknown, but if they survived in the gardens of friends, as some of them did for years before commercial introduction, we can probably assume that they're pretty disease resistant.
And 'Butterfly Magic' is certainly disease resistant. Look at that beautiful glossy foliage, here, in August, with no spray whatsoever in a wetter-than-average Kansas summer. There isn't a spot of blackspot or an insect-damaged leaf on the bush that I can see. This is the second year for 'Butterfly Magic' in my garden and she hasn't reached her full growth yet, but she was cane hardy here last winter as a tiny rose-tot, and she has grown as much as any rose this year. I have a 2 year old start of 'Quietness' in the bed next to her, and although I view 'Quietness' as one of Buck's healthier and more vigorous roses, my 'Butterfly Magic' has been growing just as well next to it, and is just as healthy. It just seems to be a tough year for the roses, with the extra rain and late spring.
'Butterfly Magic' opens up with moderately large 4 inch diameter salmon pink blooms with yellow centers. The blooms are semi-double, with 12-16 petals, open flat, and have only a very light fragrance to my nose. They bloom in broad clusters and fade from their homogeneous salmon to a light pink or white, often mottled with spots from moisture. The yellow stamens and pistils provide wonderful contrast in the new bloom, but fade to brown as the flowers age. According to Heirloom Roses, the mature size will be 4' X 4', but mine, in its second full season, is only about 2' X 2'. There is very little available on the Internet or in my rose-themed books about 'Butterfly Magic', and she is not registered or listed in Modern Roses 12, so this is the best I can give you right now. Chamblee's doesn't list it on their website any longer and the only current source I know of is Heirloom Roses.And, no, I don't speak French, but Google Translate is a marvelous thing. Given the pace of technology, I assume we're only a few years away from a Star Trek-like Universal Translator. What a marvelous world we live in.
