Basye's Purple Rose

For fellow rose-nuts who want to grow the unusual, I would recommend that they try 'Basye's Purple Rose' as a candidate for scratching that particular thorny itch.  For the photographers among the group, it will also present the challenge of correctly capturing the difficult wine-red color into a digital file.  As you can see from the varying hues represented by the photographs on this page, that is not an easy task.  The first photo, at the left here, best captures the exact tint and hue according to my eyes.  Iphone photos of this rose, like the second picture here, often turn out truly awful.  I've mentioned it in this blog before, but I like it enough that I felt it deserved a page of its very own.

'Basye's Purple Rose' is officially a mauve shrub rose bred by Dr. Robert E. Basye in 1968.  According to
William Welch, Basye rejected the rose as "a jewel in the rough", but the rose made it to commerce nonetheless, perhaps through stock given to Welch by Basye in 1983.  A cross of R. foliolosa and R. rugosa rubra, I've placed it in my mind as a Hybrid Rugosa, although I suppose it could just alternatively just as easily be described as a Hybrid Foliolosa.  Blooms are single with 5 petals, about 2.5 inches wide, have a mild fragrance to my nose, and repeat sporadically.  After the first flush the bush usually has a few blooms on it, but it won't make a large impact on garden color for the rest of the season.  I've seen the color described in various sources as "rich cabernet-red", "fuchsia", "magenta", and "rich wine-crimson with strong purple tones".  Personally, I would incorporate the velvety texture of the petals into my description of the color and tell the reader that the petals were cut out of the royal purplish-red robe of an English king.

This shrub is healthy here in Kansas, with no blackspot or mildew visible, but it is reported to mildew in some climates.  It has narrow medium green leaves, but the leaves towards the bottom 18 inches of the plant tend to drop off over the summer with no apparent disease.  The picture at left illustrates the bush in full bloom.  It was completely cane hardy in my garden last year in a winter that took almost all modern hybrid roses back to the ground, so I'm sure it's hardy in Zone 4 and probably can be successfully grown in Zone 3.  Terminal height in my garden is about 5 feet high and about 4 feet wide from the original plant.  It does throw up suckers on its own roots and I expect this rose could form a thicket if untended.  Young canes are red and very thorny, while older canes have less numerous awl-like prickles, but the bush form is gangly and not well covered.

'Basye's Purple Rose' is a collector's plant, not a landscaping specimen, and it seems to be primarily known and raised in America.  I couldn't find any mention of it in Peter Beale's Classic Roses, Twentieth-Century Roses, or Roses, but it is is described in G. Michael Shoup's Roses in Southern Gardens and William Welch's Antique Roses for Southern Gardens.  The latter describes it as ravishingly fragrant, but is the only source I've seen that attributes it with any substantial bouquet.

There are reports that 'Basye's Purple Rose' is tetraploid and fertile with modern roses.  Paul Barden listed the rose as "likely my very favorite Rugosa and certainly one of my favourite roses period.   Few, however,  seem interested in the rose as breeding stock.   Kim Rupert perhaps stated it most clearly in a  post on helpmefind.com/rose where he said "Able to be crossed with other roses, but far from willing and extremely willing to pass on awful plant architecture....a truly awful choice for breeding."   

Belinda's Dream

As we read and learn about the EarthKind® program and its roses, sooner or later one of the roses most gardeners consider growing is the perfectly pink double rose, 'Belinda's Dream', released by Dr. Robert Basye in 1988.

'Belinda's Dream'

'Belinda's Dream' has quickly become a standard rose to compare others against for its disease resistance and low-maintenance care, but I find no reason to fault the flower either.  This very double rose (over 100 petals) has a light, clean pink bloom that combines the high-centered modern rose form with its old garden rose resistance to disease and wide soil-type tolerance.  A seedling of a cross between 'Jersey Beauty' and the incredibly fragrant Hybrid Tea 'Tiffany', 'Belinda's Dream carries her own strong and unique fragrance as well.  Resistant to blackspot, mildew, and root-node nematode, the foliage on this 3 foot tall bush is perfect throughout the season, with no spraying necessary here in Kansas, or reportedly elsewhere. Large perfect flowers are borne freely over the season, perhaps balling up a bit in cool wet spring weather, but reliably repeating on this dense-foliaged shrub.  This is one of the few shrub roses that is as useful as a cutting rose to present to Mrs. ProfessorRoush as it is for display in my garden.  If I have a complaint, it is that I would say that 'Belinda's Dream', listed in all sources as hardy in Zones 5-9, is actually just barely hardy here in Zone 5b Kansas, because both my specimens die back to the ground nearly every winter.  I'm not alone in that assessment either, since I just heard that viewpoint about hardiness repeated from a source that has observed the rose growing in Kansas City.  For that reason, I'd only recommend growing her own-root, on her own feet.

'Belinda's Dream', still blooming in October

Now, I'll admit to knowing next to nothing about rose genetics, but I'm intrigued that a cross of 'Jersey Dream', a light yellow, single-flowered Hybrid Wichurana rambler, and 'Tiffany', an exhibition style, light pink Hybrid Tea with only 25 petals, resulted in this extremely double and rapidly repeating rose of short shrub stature. The strong fragrance makes a little sense with the parentage of the James Alexander Gamble Fragrance award-winning 'Tiffany', as does the clear pink bloom color from the same parent and the disease resistance from its rambler father, but where did all the petals and the bushy stature come from?

'Basye's Purple Rose'

There are, for your interest, only four other officially released Basye-bred cultivars ('Basye's Legacy', 'Basye's Purple Rose', 'Basye's Myrrh Scented Rose', and 'Basye's Blueberry Rose') from which I would conclude that Dr. Basye was very choosy about the roses he released.   I also grow 'Basye's Purple', another disease-free rose in Kansas and a uniquely-colored one.  We may not have seen the end of Dr. Basye's rose bloodlines, though, because his rose collection was donated to Texas A&M after his death in 2000 and is being merged with the breeding stock of famed hybridizer Ralph Moore, also donated after the latter's death in 2008, as part of the AgriLife program of Texas A&M.

Many roses have an interesting history, but 'Belinda's Dream' has a story better than most and I believe there is a lesson in her creation. 'Belinda's Dream' was the result of a lifelong hobby of the late Dr.Basye, a mathematician at Texas A&M University.  Dr. Basye was searching to combine disease resistance, drought tolerance, and thornlessness with modern bloom form, and folklore has it that he almost didn't release 'Belinda's Dream', which he named for a friend's daughter, because it wasn't thornless enough.  I believe that the lesson in this rose, bred in Caldwell Texas and the first to be awarded EarthKind®and Texas Superstar status (both in 2002), is that it provides a convincing example of how important it is for hybridizers to breed and select roses in the exact geographic region where the rose is targeted to be grown and marketed. A similar example of this principle is that the late Dr. Griffith Buck's rose breeding program in Iowa provided us with many roses of the same disease-free characteristics and better hardiness for the MidWest region.  Perhaps a rose-breeding motto, "Know the Region, Know the Roses" should become the mantra for hybridizers of the next century.