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.

Broken Dreams

This isn't the blog I had intended for today, but blogging gardeners often grasp clear moments of illustration when they occur.  I've written previously about the ephemeral, fickle nature of good weather in Kansas, and this morning I have proof for the skeptical.  So, through the blur of my tears, I present to you the tallest (5 foot tall) of the 'Yellow Dream' Oriental Lilies that I blogged about yesterday, now staked and tied to an old broom handle.

You see, last night at approximately 8:30 p.m., a north wind suddenly rose frantically outside the house; dead calm one minute, and then 50 or 60 mph gusts the next, stirring the dust off the top gravel road and rattling the windows.  I took a step out our west door to look around and about got clobbered by a flying shingle off the roof.  We were on the west edge of a storm that was heading south; just close enough to catch the wind, but very little of the rain.  This morning I woke up to inspect the damage and found the sole victim was this lily, the one inch thick stalk bent over at a 90 degree angle 3 inches above the ground.  On the picture below, the entire plant is circled in white and the bent portion of the stem circled in red (the dry leaves at the right of the picture are a blueberry that got crisped in last week's three digit heat). This kind of catastrophe certainly wasn't worth trading for 0.2 inches of rain, even in this dry summer season.

I don't know if it this 'Yellow Dream' will live to open another flower or not. Or if not, if the bulb will survive with all its energy already expended into all these beautiful flowers.  I know only that it serves as a perfect example of what often happens to the largest, fastest growing plants of my landscape.  The sisters of this flower nearby were shorter and better protected by the surrounding plants so perhaps the lesson here is that in moderate growth lies survival.  Or perhaps the lesson is that this lily should have picked a better gardener, one who anticipated the storm and staked it ahead of time.  I should have known better.  I don't think that I lost any new basal rose canes from this storm, but I've learned, as stated before, to keep them pinched back to thicken them as they grow.

So, for this year at least, seeing this 'Yellow Dream' in full glorious display will remain just a dream.

Almost Anonymous Lilies

Wow, talk about your mental anguish!   You see, first of all, I recently lost the thumb drive that contains the list of my 2011 plant acquisitions and my recently updated garden maps.  I was sure I had backed it up, but have been unable find the backup anywhere.  Secondly, I can recall getting a bulb order in this spring from a mail order nursery and I know it contained some Naked Ladies and some other less common bulbs, but I could not remember exactly what else I ordered.

Oriental Lily 'Yellow Dream'

And then this beauty has popped up in my front landscaping and not only was I unable to put a name to it for several days, I couldn't remember planting it this year at all.  Actually there are two of them, very tall (3 1/2 to 4 1/2 feet tall) and floriferous, with about 8-10 buds on each one, just starting to bloom. They are too yellow for Madonna Lilies. They're too late and too large to be Asiatics. They're not strongly scented as near as I can tell right now and they're much more robust than I can usually get an Oriental lily to grow here in dry Kansas.  And they're big blooms, bigger than 'Stargazer'.  And so many blooms on each stem!  Gorgeous!  It is extremely frustrating to me, though, when I can't provide the proper name for a plant (except for the umpteen zillion orange daylilies).

So I searched and I searched my notes and scraps of packages.  I searched electronically through my plant lists for "lily" and "lilium".  I found nothing.  I finally vaguely remembered that I had planted a yellow Oriental lily in my Hydrangea Bed several years back.  And there, buried in my plant maps, comes this note from 2009:  "Oriental Lilly 'Yellow Dream', 8 scattered in Hydrangea Bed and in Front Bed."  The feeling of relief I had was as welcome as a July rain storm in Kansas, even though now I'm a bit chagrined that I can't spell "lily" correctly in my notes.

I do, however, know who is really to blame for my angst.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush particularly likes lilies; it doesn't matter if they are Asiatics or Orientals or daylilies.  And so I resolved last year to plant more of the Asiatics and Orientals to extend the lily bloom period in my garden.  And what do I get for my efforts to be a good gardening husband?  Mental angst and the self-doubt which comes along with aging, the inability to remember the name of something, and the anxiety over whether Alzheimer's disease has begun to set in.

You know what they say, though, about old gardeners and Alzheimer's disease: Forgetting the name of a plant is not a symptom of Alzheimer's disease, it is finding that you planted it in your neighbor's garden instead of your own that indicates you might have a problem.

Thistleocide

You know, and I know, that I've been working hard to preserve the native forbs by allowing vast areas of my prairie lawn to go unmown this summer.  Actually, my actions might be better described as "hardly working", since it takes more effort to mow than to let the prairie grow.  And I've been showing off my native wildflowers in various posts, like here, and here.

Regarding those native wildflowers, however, I draw the line at allowing the thistles to grow unchecked in the yard.  The spiky little gray-green creature at the  right is Wavy-Leaf Thistle (Cirsium undulatum), a less-than-lovable member of the Asteraceae (or Sunflower) family.   It is found throughout Kansas in dry prairies, disturbed areas, and over-grazed pastures.  Hmmm, "over-grazed pastures" is also a good description for a prairie mowed every two weeks or so for several years, isn't it?  Wavy-Leaf Thistle is not the only thistle I've found in the area; Bull Thistle or Cirsium vulgare is also found here, but the latter is not native and is listed as a noxious weed.  Wavy-Leaf Thistle is, however, the most prevalent thistle in my yard, and even if Native Americans did view it as a food source, I do not.

So, I'm dispatching them with a machete wherever they crop up.  Yes, I am a serial thistle killer.  There's just something so satisfying about swinging that big knife blade at my feet and managing to lop off a thistle at the base while avoiding my shins and toes.  It's almost a primeval satisfaction, born out of man's necessity to make his immediate environment more comfortable.  And I also know a secret about cutting thistles, a secret born of experience and farm lore, that I'll pass on to you.

Thistle-cutting, in my case, simply brings back memories of childhood.  I spent a fair portion of my youth on the seat of an old Massey-Ferguson 135 tractor with a "bush-hog" attached to the power takeoff.  Because controlling them caused me sunburn and sweat, thistles and ironweed were my childhood enemies, and I took great pleasure in chopping them down to size several times a summer.  I remember distinctly a five acre section of our cow pasture that had become overgrown with Bull Thistle to the point where neither people nor cows could walk it unscathed.  My paternal grandfather, a farmer from the time of horse-draw plows, related to my father that they should be cut down every year on June 21st, so for several years on the 21st of June, I'd be found mowing that pasture, rain or shine, usually in the boiling sun.  And lo and behold, the thistles declined over about five years until nary a one could be found.

Even back then, young but with an interest in science and nature, I recognized that the real secret was that on or around June 21st every year, the thistles were open in flower but none had yet gone to seed.  And there was not enough time left in the hot summer for a 3-4 foot tall thistle to grow back up and flower and seed again.  So the real trick was simply keeping these behemoths from procreating until they dwindled, an agricultural and military technique that has worked on many different native species time and again over the centuries.


So, I apologize to all the native plant purists, but my ingrained training will not allow me to let the thistles be thistles.  I'm also, of course, preempting Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who might have reluctantly consented to allow a little Echinacea and Black-Eyed Susans to proliferate, but who might become more adamant about removing the thistles.  To those of you who want to join the anti-thistle brigade, take my grandfather's advice and cut them to the ground in late June or early July (or exactly on June 21st to honor his memory with me).  Your pastures may not be purely native, but your bare legs will thank you for it, nonetheless.