The Catalonian

'El Catala'

The beautiful, albeit slightly heat-singed, bi-colored rose pictured at the left is the Griffith Buck rose 'El Catala', a tribute to the great Catalan rose breeder Pedro Dot (or Pere Dot i Martinez as he was known in Catalan).  The Catalonians are an ethnic group in northern Spain (including Barcelona) with their own distinct language. As a high school student, Griffith Buck was assigned by a Spanish teacher to find a pen pal from Spain.  Senor Dot became that transAtlantic correspondent, taking the time to befriend the budding rosarian in a mentoring relationship that forged a lifetime interest and friendship, although the actual letters were written by his niece, Maria Antonia.  Pedro Dot's roses are not widely distributed these days, but if you've seen any of them you would most likely have run across 'Nevada', a single white Hybrid Moyesii, or the Large-Flowered climber 'Madame Grégoire Staechelin', both bred in 1927.

Officially listed as a red-blend grandiflora, 'El Catala' was released in 1981.  The classic buds open slowly to reveal double 4 inch diameter blooms of rose-red to crimson-red on the face of the petals and very pale rose on the reverse.  The color seems to intensify in heat and sunlight.  Blooms are borne singly or in clusters up to 8 at a time and have a mild fragrance.  The bush, in its second summer in my garden, is small at present, only 2 feet tall and about 1.5 feet wide, and seems healthy but not very vigorous.  It has a slow repeat bloom, but I've seen no fungus or winter damage here during two seasons.  The seed parent was 'Wanderin' Wind', a Buck-bred pink shrub, and the pollen parent was a complex cross of a seeding of 'Dornroschen' and 'Peace' with 'Brasilia'.  It is the latter ancestor, a scarlet rose with a golden yellow reverse, that the unique coloring pattern of 'El Catala' seems to originate from.   

'El Catala'

I find the coloring to be quite similar to the 1980 William Warriner-bred eventual AARS winner 'Love', although 'Love' tends to be a little more crimson on the inside and a little more white on the outside of the petals than 'El Catala'.   I grow 'Love' here on the Kansas prairie as well as 'El Catala', and it is no contest that  'El Catala' is a much more healthy rose than 'Love', which struggles year to year to keep enough canes alive to reach a bloom-supporting size.  Although the summer heat seems to be doing its worst on the pictured 'El Catala' blooms, they hold their own the rest of the year, adding a nice and very different touch to the front of the rose garden.

Passed Along Pleasures

It's always a great joy when somebody gifts you a plant or when you can pass along a favorite plant to a friend.  Witness "Greggo's Sedum", a gift from Greggo when he visited my garden a few weeks back.  In the midst of drought, with everything fighting for survival, there could be no more useful gift than a succulent, even if it is one purloined from a distant garden during the travels of a friend. 

Greggo, as you can see, the sedum clippings survived, rooted, and are even getting ready to flower.  It's somewhat sad to be fearful about the drought resistance of a succulent, but I think I'll hold off planting it out into the garden for awhile until I'm sure it can survive the drought.  I don't want to risk this memory of friendship, any more than I would risk the divisions of sedums from my maternal grandmother that have grown for years in my garden.

Almost two decades ago, in the infancy of my gardening education, I came across a delightful book named Passalong Plants, authored by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1993.  As the title suggests, Passalong Plants is a descriptive collection of heirloom plants that are often gifted from gardener to gardener, mother to daughter or father to son in the gardens of the South. It's about old plants and old friends, varieties that aren't often found at nursery centers, but which can anchor a regional garden because they've survived the climate of time.  These beautiful plants are all described in, as the foreword by Allen Lacy states, "a distinctive voice, folksier and colloquial and playful."  If you can find a copy, it is one of the most delightful reads of "modern" gardening literature.  Along the way, amidst the humor and joy of gardening in the words, you'll learn about plants that need to be found for your own garden, about the delightful stories of their provenance and value to the gardeners who grow them, and you'll be reminded of all the wonderful plants you already have that represent friends and family in your own garden. 

Broken Record

News reports have now made it official; July 2012 was the hottest July on record in North America.  I don't know about you, the broader audience that is reading this blog, but I expected that the record would be broken.  Certainly the heat and drought here in Kansas have exceeded my usual dismal expectations.  I've found myself taking numerous pictures of rain clouds and judging storm directions on radar to the detriment of the rest of my life, and I've been disappointed in most cases to see the rain veer away from Manhattan.  I can't count the times when I've actually seen actual rain falling down from a quarter mile distant vantage where I remained dry and sun-blasted.  Here, for example, is a photo of a storm that I took on my way into work on July 12th, missing Manhattan about a mile to the east:



Of greater interest to me is what all this means for the future and what it tells us about "global warming."  The previous record we broke in July here in Kansas was set in the Dust-bowl year of 1935.  So we have at least, with the reputed additional effects of global warming, broke a record set some 77 years ago before anyone even dreamed of climate change.  Temperature records in the US have only been kept since 1885, a mere 50 years earlier than the 1935 records.  How can we possibly say that this July was the hottest EVER?  The hottest on record in the short range of human experience yes, but the hottest EVER?  And the "hot" records are being set here in North America.  The same newspaper edition that announced the hottest July ever contained a story about a rare snowfall in Johannesburg South Africa; a place where it snows only once every 20 years on average. 

Certainly, Kansas has had previous, and will have in the future, dry years and windy years and hot years and cold years.  Horticulture in Kansas will always try the patience of gardener and wife.  Isaac Goodnow, a co-founder of Kansas State University, moved to Kansas and reached the Manhattan area in April of 1855, long before official records of temperature and climate were recorded.  His diary from that year states "The nights are exceedingly windy and dusty", a statement that wouldn't shock anyone living here 157 years later.  He also noted that he "have had to spend much time almost everyday in encouraging the young men and keeping them from going home.” I, for one, can easily sympathize with that last entry for there are many times this summer when I've stood in my garden and been tempted to chuck it all and move to a better climate.

 In the meantime, the drought has been bad this summer, but I'm encouraged that the prairie looks approximately the same as it did early in June, as shown in the photo above.  We've had over 40 days of 100F+ degree temperatures and less than a total of 2 inches of rain in that entire period, but the prairie is holding its own, as most of my garden seems to as well.  My assessment of my garden, of course, is still limited by a brief examination at 5:30 a.m. while I run around frantically with watering cans, but I will take "holding its own" as a positive until I see September begin to usher back more temperate weather. 

John Franklin

The most prolific bloomer of the Ag-Canada roses, according to a 1992 Horticulture article by Ian Ogilvie and John Arnold, is the medium-red shrub rose 'John Franklin'.  Unfortunately, although Ogilvie and Arnold listed 'John  Franklin' as having medium resistance to blackspot, John Franklin is one of the worst of the Canadians for disease resistance in my Kansas garden.  I might see the advertised 14 weeks of bloom on him, but if I don't watch and spray this bush, 10 weeks of his bloom will be carried above bare-stems.

'John Franklin' is otherwise a really nice shrub rose, with clusters of semi-double flowers appearing in rapid succession.  This pink-rose-red tone is not my favorite color among roses, but if you like the color, you'll see a lot of it on this bush.  Bred by Dr. Felicitas Svejda in 1970, and introduced  by Ag Canada in 1979,  'John Franklin' is a well-mannered shrub rose of the Explorer Series that has matured at about 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide in my garden, a great big red ball without many thorns.  'John Franklin' is very hardy in northern gardens, but alongside the lack of disease resistance I must also note that I find little fragrance present in the blooms.  The seed parent is believed to be 'Lilli Marleen' and the pollen parent 'Red Pinocchio' X ('Joanna Hill' x Rosa spinosissima).

   

'John Franklin' is likely a great example of a rose whose blackspot resistance may vary depending on the exact endemic strain of the fungus in a garden and on regional environmental factors.  Ogilvie and Arnold listed 'John Franklin' alongside 'Champlain' as having medium resistance to blackspot, but I find 'Champlain' to be a far more superior rose in blackspot resistance, bloom time, color, and overall garden impact.  Helpmefind.com states that 'John Franklin' is "very disease resistant," although one member of that site comments that he is prone to rust in California.  The red hue of this rose also seems to vary by location, with some pictures on the web appearing almost orange, and others near-crimson.

'John Franklin's explorer namesake was a Rear-Admiral of the British Navy who perished in 1846, along with his starving, lead-poisoned, cannabilistic crew and his icebound ships, during an attempt to chart the Northwest Passage.  In the case of 'John Franklin', the rose, I suspect that over the years horticulture may well imitate history and we won't see much of this rose except in those very cold Zone 3 and below areas, where anything that blooms is still welcome and blackspot doesn't grow well enough to bother roses.  And, of course, as global-warming continues, this rose is going to have less and less land to grow on, since it won't grow in the increasingly open seawater above the Arctic Circle and the Zones are moving ever-farther north.  Does it even snow in Canada anymore?