Rosa Arkansana

I was giving a talk on hardy roses to a local gardening club recently and one of the members asked me if there were any native roses in Kansas.  To my knowledge, there are two;  invasive and colonizing R. multiflora, and prairie stalwart R. arkansana.

R. arkansana is, in fact, also known as the Prairie Rose and it is native to a large portion of central North America, from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains, and north to Canada.  This once-yearly bloomer ranges in height from one to three feet, although on the native tall-grass prairie of the Flint Hills I seldom see it above the foot mark.  There are 5 heart-shaped petals on this single, medium pink rose, and the center is covered with numerous bright yellow stamens.   According to the Kansas Wildflower site, it has roots that may go down more than 20 feet into the prairie subsoil and it is very drought-resistant.  The species name, arkansana, refers to the Arkansas River of Colorado, not the State of Arkansas.  It is the state flower, however, not of Colorado or Arkansas, but of North Dakota and Iowa.  Very confusing, isn't it?

If it has become evident that no individual identity is sacred or private on the Internet, it is even more evident for our plants.  I knew that this native rose was one of those used in the breeding of the AgCanada Parkland series roses, but during my search for information about R. arkansana, I found a 1976 article about breeding with R. arkansana written by none other than H. H. Marshall of the Morden Research Station.  I've now learned that R. arkansana is a tetraploid, containing 28 chromosomes, and so it is compatible to breed with most of our modern Hybrid Teas and Floribundas, although there are strong interspecies sterility barriers between R. arkansana and cultivated roses and so the F1 generation hybrids are hard to come by.  R. arkansana provides its hardiness to the offspring and it lends an extended blooming period due to adaptations that allow it to bloom after grazing or spring prairie fires.  It is also tolerant of the dry and moderately alkaline soils of the prairie.  To get the initial interspecies crosses, the Canadian program discovered that a few modern roses, such as Floribunda 'Donald Prior', would accept R. arkansana pollen.  The AgCanada releases 'Cuthbert Grant' and 'Adelaide Hoodless' were two of the later generation crosses that had 'Assiniboine' (a first generation cross of 'Donald Prior' and R. arkansana) as an ancestor.  Now I understand why 'Adelaide Hoodless' is essentially a once-blooming rose with a very long (over 6 weeks of bloom) season.  I also have learned that the bright red pigment of 'Adelaide Hoodless' looks a little different from other roses because it carries the pigment "Peonin", absent in most modern hybrids but inherited from R. arkansana.

I know that I've been rambling on about my Native Prairie Rose, but I would be remiss if I did not add in a link to an unbelievable fountain of Internet knowledge, the CybeRose & Bulbs site.  I don't know who is behind it, but I can already tell I'm going to lose hours and hours there. This site that contained the H. H. Marshall article is a treasury of  information on rose breeding and roses, many of them from the American Rose or its Annual and written by the giants of our rose-breeding past;  Basye, Buck, Hansen, Lammerts, Harkness, and de Vries among many others.  There is even a recopy of Luther Burbanks 1914 article, Burbank on the Rose, and  a 1976 article by a then-little-known-breeder, Mr. William J. Radler, titled Blackspot Resistant Roses.  And there is an extensive pictorial catalogue of roses.  Abandon all sense of time, those of ye who enter.

God Loves Magenta

Well, at least He seems to.  I come to that conclusion because everything in the garden, if left to its own devices, seems to turn back into magenta.  A large portion of wild flowering plants on the prairie also seem to border on shades of magenta.  Unfortunately ProfessorRoush is not that fond of magenta.

Take for example, garden phlox.  I have a pure white form of Phlox paniculata, 'David', that is extremely healthy and vigorous here in Kansas and I have divided it several times in my garden.  My fondness for this plant may have a little to do with the fact that I have an adult son named David, but it also has to do with the fact that this is a very low-maintenance plant for me, needing little more than a haircut each spring.  It is just starting to bloom this year and while I have several pure white clumps blooming on the south side of the house, the north side plant just recently began to bloom as pictured at the right.  The early blooms are magenta, although the remaining 3/4ths of the plant looks like it will bloom the normal white form, albeit a week or so from now.  

I don't know about you, my fellow gardener, but I much prefer the all-white form pictured at the left, and therefore the "bad" 'David' is going to get ripped out at the roots.  I don't know if this was a mutation of a portion of my plant or simply some wild reseeding going on adjacent to the original plant, but the magenta parts have to go. And soon. Sorry, God, but my view of the Garden of Eden includes the philosophy that white is "good" and magenta is "evil."

Hi! We're Here!

Imagine that your doorbell is ringing early on a Sunday morning when you are just trying to start the day quietly and calmly with the newspaper and a little quality time with Mrs. ProfessorRoush (okay, not the actual latter person, but somebody else close to you).  And it turns out to be your persnickety insert here (parents, brother, sister, mother-in-law, cousin etc.) arriving unannounced for their visit several weeks early.  And you haven't cleaned the house or made up their room yet and the yard needs mowed and the dishes are piled in the sink and the dog left you a present on the dining room rug.

Think about all that for a while and you'll have a small inkling of how I felt yesterday when Mrs. ProfessorRoush called to tell me that my new roses had come in and asked me what I wanted her to do with them.  Yipes!  Like many other rose-lovers, I had jumped at the 50% off sale that Heirloom Roses announced a week or two back and I ordered seven rose bands at that time.  Yes, I knew that it was the wrong time of the year to order roses for planting in Kansas.  I was counting on slow order processing in a time of increased demand, and on the promise by Heirloom that "once my order was reviewed by staff, I would receive an updated confirmation with details on the expected shipping date and the official order number."  I planned to follow through on their offer to make adjustments to the shipping date, if necessary, once they informed me of the likely time of arrival. 

There was, however, no followup email confirming the order, and now I've got to figure out how to keep seven baby roses alive indoors (which I'm not very good at) until the +100F heat wave breaks here in Kansas (which may take until the end of August at this rate!).  Planting these greenhouse grown plants outdoors right now would be approximately equivalent to applying a blowtorch to their tender leaves.  I would expect their survival time to be numbered by hours, whether I placed them in shade or in sun and regardless of watering schedule.  So, indoors they are and indoors they'll stay for, at the least, several weeks while the calendar moves closer to the Autumn Solstice. An incredibly sunny window, an old aquarium, and, I'm certain, some chemical fungal preventatives will be required.   On the plus side, these are incredibly vigorous and healthy looking plantlets, perhaps the best that I've ever received by mailorder from any nursery.  Even with that, I'll be lucky if the seven innocent little green creatures aren't seven brown sticks before I get them outdoors.

The names of my new roses, for the interested, are 'Amiga Mia', 'AppleJack', 'Chorale', 'Gentle Persuasion', 'Fruhlingsmorgen', 'Scabrosa', and 'Souv du President Lincoln'.  Yes, I'm still on a Griffith Buck rose kick. Thank God I showed some uncharacteristic restraint and narrowed my initial list down from 25 roses or so to just these seven infants.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush would have been quite unhappy if her entire kitchen cabinet space had been converted into a nursery once again. 

Where the Ratibida Grows

Wandering the cow pasture this week, I noticed that a small clump of Ratibida columnifera, also known as Mexican Hat or Prairie Coneflower, has established itself just north of the fence line near my house. Finding Ratibida there was a surprising occurrence in my pasture, though after I thought about it, hardly a mysterious one.  Ratibida columnifera IS native to Riley County Kansas, as is a cousin, Ratibida pinnata (the Gray Coneflower).  The local Prairie Coneflower is, however, supposed to have only yellow-colored rays, as does the longer-rayed Gray Coneflower in this area.  The plants that I found, a small clump about 4-5 feet around, is identical to the species form found farther south, with yellow and red-brown rays dropping down from the disk as you can see pictured at the right.  

 

Don't lose any sleep over my find though, okay? This clump is a colony, I believe, of a Ratibida that I planted from purchased seed about 8 years ago in my garden beds. I grew it one year and one year only, hoping to see a large gorgeous, drought-resistant plant, but the small flowers and dusky coloring were disappointing so I spade-pruned it and never grew it again. This Prairie Coneflower has had the last laugh, though, because it re-seeded itself away from the controlling gardener's eyes. The newly found group exists in an area about 100 feet from the original planting, where at one time there was a cow watering tank and where the ground was previously chewed up by the cloven-hoofed dunderheads.  The disturbed ground probably gave this perennial plant a beachhead to grow in, and it has likely existed without my knowledge ever since.  At least I believe that to be the explanation because I've never found it growing elsewhere on my own or my neighbor's pastures.

I may have to give this formidable little creature another chance in my garden.  If it can survive in competition with the native prairie, through drought and cold and wind, unaided for a number of years, then it can probably do well in my native wildflower bed.  There, I might learn to appreciate it for what it is;  a survivor.